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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28772391">Ghosting (And Other Ways Sylvain Annoys Ingrid)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orochiis/pseuds/orochiis'>orochiis</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Dorothea/Sylvain at the start, F/M, Fluff In The End, lots of mental health stuff, pls don't read if it may be triggering, suicide attempt (mentioned)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 06:15:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>27,659</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28772391</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orochiis/pseuds/orochiis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sylvain comes back from university away in Adrestia with a girlfriend who he parades around town. Ingrid swears that she's not jealous of this new girl- she's always been Sylvain's right hand woman, and now is no different. Instead of thinking on it too much, she throws herself back into her studies while Sylvain spends his father's money on a trip to Enbarr. Ingrid spends the next few years figuring out what she really wants.</p><p>A story about growing up, and how it takes longer than you originally thought.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Sylvain Jose Gautier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Sylvgrid Big Bang</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>YEEHAW I'm posting this all in one go so I hope you all enjoy! :) Please do heed the tags, the mental health stuff is v important to the story. </p><p>This was written for the Sylvgrid Big Bang, and I was paired with <a href="https://twitter.com/puppysicle">puppysicle</a> who did some really cute art which you'll see later on!!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Summer in Fhirdiad isn’t warm. Though the sun shines through the clouds, its warmth doesn’t permeate down to the streets. For most of the summer, t-shirts and shorts are nowhere near enough to keep the residents of the northern city up to temperature. However, if they’re lucky, they get a few days that feel like summer in Adrestia, or in Leicester, and every residence takes full advantage of this.</p><p>Today is one such day. A day off work, luckily, for Ingrid and Felix, who soak up the little sun they’ll get for the whole year in Dimitri’s back garden. The two of them lie mostly in silence, Ingrid’s fingers pulling up blades of grass and sprinkling them onto Felix’s chest while he stares skyward.</p><p>“Did you hear?” Felix asks eventually.</p><p>“About the murder that happened down the road from here? Yeah, that was wild.”<br/><br/>“No, not that. What the fuck, Ingrid? Who just casually brings up local murder stories?” Felix turns his head to glare at her, to which Ingrid just shrugs.<br/><br/>“I thought it was interesting. They got the person who did it though – it was the man’s partner or something.”<br/><br/>“Right, okay. Anyway, I meant did you hear about Sylvain coming home?”<br/><br/>Ingrid stops pulling up grass for a brief moment, her hand crashing anticlimactically against the ground. She hasn’t seen Sylvain in three years, and she’s not entirely sure that right now if the best time to bump into him again.</p><p>“No, he didn’t tell me.”<br/><br/>“Oh,” Felix says, his gaze flicking back up to the clouds. “I wonder why.”<br/><br/>“We haven’t really spoken much at all since he left,” she confesses. “We just kind of drifted apart. He’s an arts student, I do science. Too different to have conversations about regularly, you get me?”</p><p>“I’m a programmer and he talks to me,” Felix points out. “And as far as I’m aware he talks to Dimitri too, and he’s doing politics.”<br/><br/>“I thought you didn’t like Sylvain,” Ingrid teases, tossing another handful of grass at her friend.<br/><br/>“He’s been a lot more bearable since he went hundreds of miles away for university,” he answers drily.</p><p>“Why’s he coming home now, though?”<br/><br/>“He’s just visiting family!” Dimitri announces, appearing from the kitchen with a jug of iced tea and three glasses. Felix sits upright as Dimitri sets the jug down, settling himself in front of the other two. Ingrid sighs as she pulls herself up, not finding the tea in any way appealing after hearing about Sylvain’s sudden reappearance.</p><p>“And dare I ask when he’s coming?”<br/><br/>“His flight is tomorrow,” Felix supplies. “He’ll be in late in the evening, I suppose.”<br/><br/>“Did you not know about this, Ingrid?” Dimitri asks.</p><p>“No. He doesn’t speak to me anymore, because he’s an asshole.”</p><p>“He’s not terrible,” he defends, though his tone wavers and it’s not clear if he actually means that.</p><p>“He’s a bit of a scumbag,” Felix is quick to admit, which earns a snort from Ingrid.</p><p>“Okay, so maybe when he was in high school he… made some questionable decisions. Now, though? We haven’t seen him in three years. He could be better!” Dimitri pours three cups of tea.</p><p>“Nah, he’s just like that. But either way, he’ll be here tomorrow, and he definitely wants to hang out with us. I don’t know if I can handle him in person, but he’ll probably have organised some… event,” Felix explains, snatching his tea from Dimitri.</p><p>“Do you know why he doesn’t speak to you anymore, Ingrid?”<br/><br/>“I think the term is ghosting,” Felix supplies before Ingrid has a chance to reply herself.</p><p>“Ghosting? But he’s not dead?”<br/><br/>“No, idiot. It’s when you stop talking to someone, pretending you don’t exist. You know, like a ghost.”</p><p>“And when did this ghosting start, then?”</p><p>“About… a year ago,” Ingrid says, pulling her phone from her pocket. “Sometimes I’ve messaged him, with… you know, memes, or just life updates, and he just doesn’t reply. I stopped trying about Christmas last year, because he doesn’t say anything. And it’s <em>stupid</em>! Because you can’t ghost someone that has the exact same friends as you.”<br/><br/>“Pick him up from the airport,” Felix suggests, flopping back down onto the grass. <br/><br/>“What?”<br/><br/>“Oh, yes. You’ll have to. I can’t legally drive, and Felix has the world’s most unreliable car,” Dimitri says, seconding Felix’s idea.<br/><br/>“I’ll kill us both on the way back if I go. Car’s only good for five miles or so.”<br/><br/>“Fine. How am I supposed to know when he’s going to be in if he won’t reply to my texts, though?” Ingrid says.</p><p>“Easy. I’ll tell him I’m coming to get him, and when he tells me when he’s going to be at the airport, I’ll tell you. Then you show up, and he talks to you.”<br/><br/>“I don’t know why you’re trying so hard to make this happen,” she grumbles, taking a long sip of tea.</p><p>“Because I’ll hate him even more if I have to spend his entire visit watching him not talking to you.”</p><hr/><p>His flight gets in at nine pm, and Ingrid sits outside the airport at a quarter to, just in case. Felix was right – her car is the only one reliable enough for a to and from journey. The airport isn’t far from central Fhirdiad – just outside the city, a twenty minute or so drive. Ingrid’s car was half paid for by herself, half a high school graduation present. It’s a lot more expensive than Felix’s car, but it also hasn’t had to have massive repairs done to it every sixth months, so Felix has definitely spent more money than her in the long run.</p><p>She’s not sure how much luggage Sylvain is bringing with him, but she emptied out the boot and vacuumed it in the hopes of getting all the dog hair out. It looks and smells clean, but that’s not why she’s worried about Sylvain being in it. He had never been in her car before – it was always the other way around – he picked her up for group hangs, to drive around the city, to go to McDonald’s at three in the morning.</p><p>The summer before he left for Enbarr, Ingrid and Sylvain spent a lot of time together, driving about the city, heading to the beach just the two of them. He seemed different, that summer. She was still in school, two years from finishing, and that year, he felt much cooler, older, smarter. He didn’t feel like the Sylvain she had grown up with. For the first time in her life, aged sixteen, Ingrid felt attracted to Sylvain, though if she was asked, she would vehemently deny the fact.</p><p>Clearly, something did change that summer, three years ago, because days that would have been for group activities with Felix and Dimitri quickly became days that Sylvain would forget to invite the other two. Forget, he said, but there was a twinkle in his eye as he said it, sometimes with a wink, and she would roll her eyes but laugh along. In his car, stargazing, they kissed, Ingrid’s first kiss but certainly not the first for Sylvain.</p><p>That attraction quickly disappeared when Sylvain left for Enbarr and she wasn’t looking at him every other day. When he didn’t home for Christmas, or during the summer. When their conversations became more strained, when he stopped talking to her altogether. She still doesn’t know <em>why</em>, and that’s the part that bothers her the most.</p><p>Nine o’clock flashes onto the dashboard clock, and Ingrid checks her phone to see a text from Felix – Sylvain will be out in a minute. It’s chilly outside, but she slides out of the car anyway, squinting through the rapidly darkening car park for any sign of her red headed friend. After a few minutes, his form appears from the doors of the terminal, clearly looking around for Felix’s beat up black car.</p><p>Instead, it’s her newly washed silver car that waits for him, and she waves across the car park, getting his attention. He stops in his tracks, and for a moment, Ingrid’s heart skips a beat. She’s never, ever, been one for romantic reunions, but this almost feels like one, until Sylvain slowly begins to approach, and she sees that he’s not alone.</p><p>No, not alone indeed. Holding his hand is a woman that’s probably a little taller than herself, with sunglasses covering most of her face. She has dark hair, curly, flowing around her shoulders and down to her waist. In her free hand, she carries a travel bag – red, with gold trims. Ingrid finds herself staring at her, not sure who on earth this person is, or why she’s holding Sylvain’s hand.</p><p>She’s so caught up in this mystery woman that she almost doesn’t react in time when Sylvain approaches her. As if he hasn’t been ignoring her for a year, he pulls her into a hug, and the mystery woman follows suit – ever so friendly even though Ingrid has absolutely no idea who she is.</p><p>“I thought Felix was picking me up,” Sylvain says as way of greeting. Ingrid isn’t sure if this is a good thing or not, but she weighs on the side of not.</p><p>“You know his car, it wouldn’t make it out of here in one piece.”<br/><br/>“I’ve never seen the thing in person, but I’ve heard horror stories. He’s still got that thing? I thought he rear ended someone with it a while back.”<br/><br/>“More damage done to the other person. It’s like those brick phones,” Ingrid laughs, causing the mystery woman to titter too.</p><p>“Oh, sorry, Thea. Ingrid, this is my girlfriend, Dorothea. She’s staying with me while I’m here. Thought I’d introduce her to everyone since we’ve been dating a year now.”<br/><br/>“A year next week,” Dorothea corrects. “Lovely to meet you, Ingrid. I’ve heard so much about you and your friends!”<br/><br/>Dorothea lowers her sunglasses to reveal sparkling green eyes that though kind, feel like they’re evaluating Ingrid somehow. It’s a silly thought, because she’s only just met this woman, and she already feels on edge around her. She must be around the same age as Sylvain – older, with more experience in the world. And she is pretty – very much so. When Ingrid thinks of the many girls that Sylvain chased throughout high school, Dorothea is the epitome of everything Sylvain seemed to have wanted in a girlfriend.</p><p>“You can put your things in the boot,” Ingrid says, sidling around the car to unlock the boot.</p><p>Sylvain puts his suitcase in first, followed by Dorothea’s fancy (yet Ingrid is quick to notice, not <em>actually</em> fancy) travel bag. Ingrid returns to the driver’s seat, and Sylvain slides into the front seat beside her, Dorothea in the back. Sylvain grins at her, <em>as if he hasn’t not spoken to her in a year!,</em> and Ingrid drives off into the night.</p><p>“Where to?” She manages to ask once they’re most of the way back into Fhirdiad.</p><p>“My dad’s, unfortunately,” Sylvain says. “So not out of your way at all.”</p><p>“Oh, do you two live near each other?” Dorothea asks from the back seat.</p><p>“Yeah, Sylvain lives on the same road as me, though at the other end. That’s how we know each other, really. Dimitri and Felix live in the same area too, and our parents all know each other,” Ingrid explains.<br/><br/>“Oh, cute! I wish I had such a tight knit group of friends growing up. My uni friends are all… well, rich upper-class kids, and I’m not,” Dorothea laughs. “You lot seem so cute though, I can’t wait to meet Felix and Dimitri soon too.”</p><p>“I’m sure it won’t be long,” Ingrid offers, though the more Dorothea speaks, the less she feels a desire to hang out with her. Nothing she’s saying is even that bad, but it still annoys Ingrid at her core.</p><p>The rest of the drive is silent, apart from Ingrid’s quiet playlist that she catches Dorothea singing along to on more than one occasion. When Ingrid pulls up outside Sylvain’s house, she can see his old car there – presumably not driven in three years. She’s surprised his father held onto it this long – it’s just taking up space in their driveway. Her passengers hop out while she’s considering this, heading up the path.</p><p>The lights are still on inside – Sylvain’s father presumably waiting up for him. Ingrid doesn’t envy him, having to introduce a girlfriend and explain to his dad why he hasn’t been home in three years. She doesn’t stick around to find out what happened though, nor does she continue down the street to her own home like she probably should. Instead, she turns right onto the main road, heading towards Felix’s house.</p><hr/><p>Felix looks more than a little bewildered when Ingrid shows up on his doorstep. Or, more accurately, when she shows up on the stairs to his basement, having been let in by Rodrigue. Friday night is for gaming, and he and Dimitri sit in front of a large TV, Super Smash Bros paused in front of them after Ingrid’s dramatic entrance.</p><p>Usually, if she’s not working, Ingrid attends these nights, and sits on her phone in the corner because she’s terrible at most video games that Felix and Dimitri like. She hates losing more, and there’s no way she can lose if she doesn’t play. On the rare occasions that one of them decides to practice one of the old arcade style fighting games, Ingrid is in there, wrestling the controllers from her friends so she can have a few seconds of glory.</p><p>Tonight, Dimitri puts his controller down first, getting to his feet as Ingrid stumbles down the stairs. She collapses onto the sofa, pushing away an empty pizza box. Felix sets down his controller too, but doesn’t move from his position. He quirks an eyebrow in Ingrid’s direction, to which she just sighs.</p><p>“Did you know?”</p><p>“Did I know about what?”<br/><br/>“<em>Dorothea</em>.”<br/><br/>“Who is Dorothea?” Dimitri asks.</p><p>“Sylvain’s girlfriend,” Ingrid fills in. Felix rolls his eyes.</p><p>“What the fuck?” He spits, before laughing. “How long is she going to last? Five minutes, once she meets his dad.”<br/><br/>“They’ve been dating for a year,” she says, and even Felix looks shocked.</p><p>“I wish he’d mention important things like that. I’ve never even heard of her before.”</p><p>“Is she nice?” Dimitri asks, ever the one for interrogation.</p><p>“I barely spoke to her. The whole thing was just so weird! I thought it would be just me and Sylvain, and we could talk like old times. But no, she just… appeared! And they seem so… I don’t know. PDA? Like they’re definitely the sort. If she’s anything like him, they’ll be a nightmare to deal with together.”</p><p>“Dimitri, look her up online,” Felix commands, and immediately Dimitri pulls out his phone. The blond man is nothing close to a cyber sleuth, but still, he manages to be able to find information about people with relative ease when pushed. And no one seems to mind the follow of a six-foot four man with an eye patch – somehow Felix is ten times more intimidating.</p><p>“Dorothea… from Enbarr University?”<br/><br/>“Presumably,” Ingrid agrees. “Brown hair, green eyes. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say she does something arts related like Sylvain.” Dimitri is silent for a minute, before he passes the phone to Ingrid.</p><p>“Found her. Dorothea Arnault. Second year musical theatre student at Enbarr University. And judging from the pictures, she is indeed Sylvain’s girlfriend.”<br/><br/>Felix hops up off the floor and settles himself beside Ingrid to peer over her shoulder at her phone. Even in pictures, Dorothea looks stunning – she’s gorgeous on study dates, on early morning runs, on stage in whatever musical that is, with Sylvain on dinner dates, after long flights halfway across the country. Ingrid finds this absurd – no one looks good all the time (apart from Dorothea, apparently).</p><p>“I hope he’s not planning to spend all his time here with her,” Dimitri mumbles.</p><p>“We’ll force him out,” Felix assures. “We’ve been friends forever; she can’t break us up. She <em>won’t </em>break us up. Right, Ingrid?”<br/><br/>“Yeah. Yeah, Dimitri, it’ll be fine. We’re all adults, we can be friends with Dorothea and keep being friends the four of us too. That’s how things like this work. If either of you two started dating anyone, it would be the same thing.”<br/><br/>“It’s strange though, how he didn’t mention it, isn’t it? Is it just me that finds it odd that our best friend has been dating this girl for a year and never thought to bring it up?”<br/><br/>“I suppose,” Felix says, pausing for a second. He looks at the phone in Ingrid’s hand, and then at Ingrid herself, and then back to the phone. He blinks, and shakes his head.</p><p>“Something the matter?” Ingrid asks.</p><p>“No. It’s fine. When are we meeting this girl, then?”<br/><br/>“No idea,” she says, tossing the phone back at Dimitri, who barely catches it, and flopping back onto the sofa.</p><p>“I’m sure Sylvain has a plan for getting us to meet her. She seems nice enough, from her social media,” he replies, continuing to scroll down her page.</p><p>“Who cares? Social media is shit anyway,” Felix says, sliding back onto the floor and lifting the controller once again.</p><p>“You just say that because all you have is two videos of you practicing your fencing moves,” Ingrid teases, joining him on the floor and lifting one of the spare controllers.</p><p>“My fencing moves are cooler than some musical theatre student,” Felix huffs, quitting the current game and heading back to the character selection menu. As always, he settles on Meta Knight, while Dimitri clicks onto Pikachu. Ingrid deliberates about her choice for longer, since she’s not well practiced in any of them, before settling for Sonic.</p><p>“I can’t believe you stopped that game,” Dimitri complains. “I was winning.”</p><p>“That’s exactly why I stopped it, idiot.”</p><p>Ingrid comes second, because Felix never lets anyone win, and Dimitri kept losing his place on the map and falling off the edge. It feels nice, for once, to play games with these two in the warmth and comfort of Felix’s basement, and not having to worry about Sylvain. Rolling around the map and kicking Felix’s butt whenever she can feels cathartic, and Ingrid vaguely contemplates making this a regular occurrence.</p><p>“Are you working tomorrow?” Felix asks when it comes time to leave.<br/><br/>“Until six,” Ingrid confirms. “Why, are you?”<br/><br/>“Morning shift,” Felix elaborates, stifling a yawn behind his hand. “So I should be asleep already.”<br/><br/>“As if your usual espressos won’t fix that.”<br/><br/>“Exactly. Anyway, Dimitri is coming over again tomorrow for more of the same, since he’s obviously not doing anything of worth. If you’re free in the evening, come over.”<br/><br/>“I’ll see. I’ll do my best, okay?”</p><p>“Try not to think too much about Sylvain, okay? I know that’s hard, since he’s a fucking idiot, but… you know.”</p><p>“Thank you Felix, for those wise words. Don’t let this bother you, either.”<br/><br/>“I don’t trust her.”<br/><br/>“That’s a bit extreme.”<br/><br/>“Hardly,” he snorts. “Where did she come from? What’s she doing?”<br/><br/>“Enbarr,” Ingrid says as way of answer to the first question. “And I think she’s doing being in love with Sylvain.”<br/><br/>“She’s an actress,” Felix reminds her. “It’s what they do.”<br/><br/>“You’re making no sense. If he tells you of a time when we’re going to… meet up or whatever, let me know. She seemed excited to meet you and Dimitri.”</p><p>“Saints,” Felix mumbles under his breath.</p><p>“Go to bed, Felix. I’ll text you after work.”<br/><br/>“Whatever,” Felix mumbles, moving to close the door. “Night.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Waking up to texts from Felix is never Ingrid’s favourite experience. Usually, they have something to do with his streaming career, as he likes to call it, or random unrelated questions about what car he should buy when he finally has money again. Ingrid never knows how to respond to these, and so often doesn’t. Ingrid tells him to maybe focus on not getting fired from his current job at the tiny coffee shop around the corner from where he lives and maybe he’ll have more money.</p><p>Today’s texts are more worrying, however. Usually, it’s just one, a bright green bubble with Felix’s name and a cat emoji beside it. This morning, there are four. Felix <em>never</em> double texts, and so Ingrid begins to panic. She drops her phone on her bed and dresses hurriedly, knowing that she probably has no time to do anything else before Felix inevitably wants her to be somewhere.</p><p>
  <em>{Felix} 8:42am: Are you awake?<br/><br/>{Felix} 8:44am: Doesn’t matter. Sylvain wants to meet up.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>{Felix} 8:46am: Why aren’t you awake? I need you to reply to this whether you’re coming or not. I can’t go on my own.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>{Felix} 8:51am: The diner on Conand Avenue. Be there at 9:30 or I’ll personally see to your demise.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>{Ingrid} 9:17am: Might be late but I’m on my way!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>{Felix} 9:24am: Thank fuck. I’m early and Dimitri isn’t here yet but Sylvain and what’s her name are here and they’re making out I want to die.</em>
</p><p>She barges through the door of the diner at 9:38, the latest she’s ever been to anything in her life. Dimitri has made it too, and thankfully Sylvain and Dorothea are no longer making out. She slides into the booth beside Felix, who merely rolls his eyes at her.</p><p>“Your braid is messy,” he points out.</p><p>“Thanks,” Ingrid huffs. Doing her hair wasn’t exactly top of her list of priorities this morning, not with a summon to the diner only half an hour after she woke up. She undoes the braid while placing her order for a stack of pancakes (maple syrup, sausage on the side). When the conversation turns to Sylvain and Dorothea’s relationship, courtesy of detective Dimitri, she redoes the braid, flinging it back over her shoulder.</p><p>“When did you two meet?” Dimitri asks, genuinely curious.</p><p>“Oh, that’s a really funny story actually! The arts school at Enbarr U is huge – has literally everything all in one building – photography, fine arts, drama, theatre, music, film. It’s so state of the art, really high tech. Anyway, we <em>literally</em> bumped into each other one day when Sylvain was going into the theatre to help with set painting and I was going into rehearsal – I do musical theatre – and Sylvain helped me pick up my dropped scripts and was really charming,” Dorothea explains, eyes wide and sparkling as she talks.</p><p>“Then we realised that we were always passing each other – her on the way to her singing classes and me to my oil painting masterclass I took. And that’s that!” Sylvain finishes with a grin.</p><p>“What a charming story,” Felix says, with the driest tone that Ingrid has ever heard him muster.</p><p>“Isn’t it?” Dimitri asks. He’s never been the best at picking up on Felix’s sarcasm, which has frequently got him into trouble over the years.</p><p>“And a whole year since then has passed. He’s always so sweet, always pays for dates, buys me clothes, spends a lot of quality time with me,” Dorothea says, twirling her hair around her finger and staring at Sylvain.</p><p>“It’s a year next week,” he gently corrects. “But the little things like that don’t matter! What does matter that we’re on holiday together and I get to see all my friends again.”<br/><br/>“On holiday,” Ingrid laughs. “You can’t go on holiday to where you live, Sylvain.”<br/><br/>“Oh. About that…”<br/><br/>“Sylvain is going to be moving to Enbarr with me!” Dorothea says, genuinely excited at the prospect.</p><p>A silence falls on the table. Three sets of eyes fall onto the couple, both of whom don’t seem to hear the absurdity in their plan. Dorothea blinks a few times, looking from Sylvain to the rest of the group, her eyes never knowing quite where to land. Thankfully, the silence is broken by the arrival of their breakfast, a convenient excuse to not continue that conversation.</p><p>“What the fuck,” Felix mumbles under his breath, loud enough for just Ingrid to hear. His eyes flash in her direction, and she shrugs. Sylvain has always been one for making terrible decisions, and clearly, Dorothea is just an enabler for these bad ideas.</p><p>“So,” Dimitri says eventually, after nearly twenty minutes of silence filled only by the sound of cutlery on cheap diner ceramic. “What are you going to be doing in Enbarr?”</p><p>“I got a few commissions for paintings a few weeks ago, for a number of art galleries in Enbarr and the surrounding area. They’re all indie things, nothing too… well paying, but I can manage on them for a while, especially if I get more,” Sylvain explains. He doesn’t sound entirely sure to Ingrid, but Dimitri is following his every word.</p><p>“And I have one year left of my degree. Then, I’ll hopefully set out into the world of musical theatre. Or opera! I’ve been trying my hand at so many styles of singing in the hopes that my resume is as strong as it can be.”<br/><br/>She sounds like she’s talking to an interview panel, Ingrid thinks wryly, not her boyfriend’s best friends. It’s stupid, really, how everything that Dorothea says annoys her, but there’s something about her attitude that Ingrid doesn’t like. She can’t quite put her finger on what it is, but every blink of her long eyelashes just leave Ingrid feeling more and more suspicious.</p><p>“When do you leave?” She asks, quietly, not really sure she wants to voice the question nor find out it’s answer.</p><p>“In a week. I’m mostly here to pack up my things,” Sylvain admits. “And I really wanted to see you three before I left.”<br/><br/>To her right, Felix makes some strange strangulated snorting sound, his eyes once again meeting hers. He looks away before she can discern whatever that look meant, his eyes instead falling on Dorothea. Ingrid has known Felix long enough to know that the narrowing of his eyes means he’s thinking, he’s trying to figure something out. He’s trying to figure Dorothea out, and Ingrid isn’t sure if that’s a good idea at all.</p><p>“I’m glad,” Dimitri says, “because I will miss your company, Sylvain. Now I will have to rein these two in on my own.”<br/><br/>“I don’t need reining in,” Felix says, at the same time that Ingrid says, “you have never reined me in in your life, nor will you ever, because I am capable of behaving like a normal human being.”</p><p>Her eyes flicker to Sylvain, eyebrows lowered in some attempt at a subtle glare. He seems to get the message, as he looks away somewhat sheepishly, his gaze falling on Dimitri instead – his one supporter out of his three childhood friends.</p><p>From around age nine, Sylvain realised that he could get what he wanted, when he wanted it. He was the beloved child at home, though that was due in part to how terrible his older brother was from a similar age. Sylvain excelled in everything he put his mind to – school, art, music, flirting. The flirting didn’t begin until high school, and despite being two years below him at school, Ingrid frequently had to bail him out of situations that she would have rather been nowhere near, and apologise what felt like hundreds of girls on his behalf over five years.</p><p>She didn’t realise why all these girls fell for his charms – he was like every other teenage boy, except instead of having a weird obsession with sports or video games, or worse, sports video games, he was obsessed with girls. To anyone else, it would’ve seemed like he was overcompensating for something, trying to hide something that he didn’t want getting out. But Ingrid knew him better than that – she had seen the smirk on his face when he was caught behind the canteen at lunch with a girl in the year below him, his tie undone and her hair messy.</p><p>Sylvain had always <em>enjoyed</em> getting in trouble, from the moment that he realised that it was something that he could do. Sylvain had always liked being able to do things on the first go. Sylvain had always realised that getting in trouble meant getting negative attention from his parents – he was no longer the perfect child, there was something wrong with him, maybe not to the extent that there was something wrong with Miklan, certainly, but there was a deviance from what was expected that Sylvain absolutely thrived in.</p><p>Ingrid recalls all this while staring at her syrupy plate. She contemplates if he’s still like this, even now. Is Dorothea a way of punishing himself for being the perfect child? Is this some sort of convoluted long-con in which he worms his way back into his father’s favour by showing him that he can change, look, he’s got a long-term girlfriend and they’re so in love, look, he’s got steady work with his art. Or does he genuinely love Dorothea?</p><p>Felix seems to be thinking the exact same thing, unable to decide what to say or who to look at while Dimitri converses with the seemingly happy couple. Maybe he knows more than she does – very likely, considering how little she’s heard from Sylvain over the last three years.</p><p>“We’re going to walk around town for a while,” Sylvain says eventually. “I want to show Thea all the cool places that we used to hang out when we were kids.”<br/><br/>“The bowling alley closed down last year,” Felix points out sourly.</p><p>“Aw, damn! Well, we can still have fun.”<br/><br/>Undeterred by this, Sylvain and Dorothea take their leave. She makes sure to bid farewell to everyone individually, likely aware that she’ll not see them again any time soon. When they’re gone, Dimitri slides along the booth bench a little so he’s centre between Felix and Ingrid on the other side.</p><p>“I think she’s really lovely,” he says. Ingrid raises an eyebrow, but it is Felix who speaks first.</p><p>“You’re an idiot. She’s got you right under her thumb. There’s something really dodgy going on there.”<br/><br/>“You don’t seriously think that,” Dimitri says with a half laugh.</p><p>“I absolutely do.”<br/><br/>“I… also don’t think that everything’s right in that relationship. I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something really off about her. And him, but we knew that.”<br/><br/>“He’s still a mess,” Felix confirms. “Heard from dad, who heard from Sylvain’s dad, that he’s still in extensive therapy because all the Miklan stuff continues to fuck him up to this day.”<br/><br/>“I mean, that’s what happens when your brother tries to kill you. If either of my brothers came for me, I don’t know how I’d react,” Ingrid says with a sigh.</p><p>“Well, most people wouldn’t react in the same way that Sylvain did,” Dimitri agrees. “But I’m not convinced on your theories about Dorothea. She seems genuinely nice.”<br/><br/>“She’s using him for his money,” Felix says, lifting his phone, finding that more interesting than whatever is going on in front of him.</p><p>“What?” She asks, because it sounds ridiculous, but once again, Felix has heard more from Sylvain recently, plus he spent that whole breakfast observing his girlfriend.</p><p>“Didn’t you hear her? Talked about he always pays for dinner and buys her clothes. Those sunglasses she had didn’t look cheap, nor did her earrings.”<br/><br/>“She talked about all her uni friends being upper class and she felt like she didn’t fit in properly,” Ingrid remembers.<br/><br/>“That’s a bit of a stretch,” Dimitri says, rubbing nervously at the side of his face.<br/><br/>“Not really. Sylvain’s family have always had money, which is why he went all the way to Enbarr to study art, which you can do literally anywhere,” Felix says, setting his phone down again with a clatter. “She needs money to fit in, he needs someone to sleep with so that he feels less shit about himself. They work perfectly together.”<br/><br/>“Doesn’t your step-sister live in Enbarr?” Ingrid suddenly asks Dimitri.</p><p>“Yes,” comes his careful answer.</p><p>“Could she find out dirt about them?”<br/><br/>“I’m not asking Edelgard to stalk my friend.”<br/><br/>“But <em>could</em> she, hypothetically,” Felix asks.</p><p><em>"You</em> are not asking Edelgard to stalk our friend. He’s a grown man, he’s graduated university, he can look after himself.”<br/><br/>“Sylvain has a notoriously bad track record when it comes to relationships,” Ingrid says as gently as possible. “We’re just trying to look out for him, lest he… become an issue for himself once again.”<br/><br/>“Never forget how terrible the fallout was when he had that breakdown before. Half the school was involved in that, it felt like,” Felix reminds.</p><p>“I won’t forget that,” Dimitri murmurs, for it felt like he was involved too – son of the mayor, best friend to the guy that tried to jump off a bridge because his past was catching up to him.</p><p>“Let’s just drop this for now,” Ingrid suggests. “Since he never talks to me, it’s up to you two to keep an eye on him when he’s living in Enbarr.”</p><p>“Or get Edelgard to,” Felix says.<br/><br/>“I think us two is enough,” Dimitri sighs. “Let’s go, there’s probably others looking for the table.”</p><hr/><p>It’s too much effort, Ingrid decides eventually, to care about Dorothea. She and Sylvain are grown-ups, and she’s probably looking into it too much. There’s enough going on in her life to think about without worrying about Sylvain any further. He’s taken up enough of her time over the years when it comes to her worries.</p><p>Not that she doesn’t care at all – mostly, she just doesn’t want to become one of those women who hates other women for no real reason. It’s an active choice on her part to be better, because she’s never felt this bitterness towards a girl in her life and she’s not willing to start now. Sylvain hasn’t made much of an effort with her in a year, and she shouldn’t feel the need to make a huge effort with him either.</p><p>The date rings around her head as she flops onto her bed, emotionally exhausted from Felix’s constant conspiracy theories about Dorothea and what she’s doing. Sylvain stopped talking to her a year ago, and has only spoken to her in the last few days out of necessity and politeness. All of their plans have been made through Felix, most of the group conversation directed at anyone but her. And he started dating Dorothea a year ago.</p><p>Ingrid would be stupid to think that there wasn’t even a chance that these two events weren’t slightly related. She would also be stupid to think that Sylvain had spent the first two years at university in Enbarr without anything approaching a romantic or sexual relationship. But a tiny part of her wonders if there had been something between them on the night that they kissed in his car while stargazing, and if maybe, he’d be hanging onto that possibility, just like she had.</p><p>Not that she had at all. She tried not to think about that kiss for the most part – it was a one off; it was probably a mistake. She had vehemently denied any and all attraction to her friend on the rare occasion someone in school brought it up, and now that she had been out of high school for a year, she hadn’t had the idea presented to her on a silver platter every so often. But did she like him? Was she hung up on a kiss that happened three years ago and probably meant nothing to the person she shared it with?<br/><br/>Startled by this revelation, Ingrid covers her face with her pillow and groans – this was not what she needed right now, not with work and university starting up again in a matter of weeks and two days left of Sylvain and Dorothea’s torturous visit. And the worst part is she has no one to tell – Felix will just laugh at her, and Dimitri will definitely accidentally tell Sylvain.</p><p>It’s just a crush, she reasons. She’s had crushes before – she fancied Dimitri for a year on and off when they were twelve, just because he was there. Through most of her teenage years she was practically in love with Felix’s older brother Glenn, until he died, and she spent three months crying about it. Last year she had a short-lived crush on a guy in her neuromuscular systems class until she realised that he was painfully obsessed with cats. Ingrid had gotten over all those crushes with varying speeds, but all with success, and getting over Sylvain would be just as easy.</p><p>Or so she thought, until her phone buzzes on her nightstand, with the first text from him in a year.</p><p>
  <em>{Sylvain} 10:03pm: Hey, are you doing anything tomorrow?<br/><br/>{Ingrid} 10:04pm: No, day off. Why?<br/><br/>{Sylvain} 10:05pm: Dorothea is getting her nails done before we go back to Enbarr and Dimitri and Felix are working. Do you want to hang out?<br/><br/>{Ingrid} 10:05pm: Sure. Where/when?<br/><br/>{Sylvain} 10:06pm: Do you want to just come to my place? Dad’s out, we can play football. Dorothea is out from 1.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>{</em>
  <em>Ingrid} 10:07pm: I’ll be there.</em>
</p><p>She did not want to be there. Spending time away from Sylvain at the moment was probably for the best, especially considering that he was in a relationship, and as dodgy as she thinks that relationship is, she’s hardly going to try and break them up. It won’t be a long time, she reasons. Getting your nails done can’t take longer than an hour, not that Ingrid would know. She can head out at one, taking an extra five minutes off the time she has to spend with him by walking very slowly down the street.</p><p>Damn, why didn’t she just say no? She knows why, deep down, but she curses herself and the fact that she always has felt sorry for him in a way because she’s known him growing up and knows every aspect of what makes him tick. He doesn’t like being alone, that’s number one – made very clear by the way he always invites people to his house or to go out when he would otherwise be left home alone.</p><p>So Ingrid goes down the street to Sylvain’s house the next day at one, phone and keys in her jacket pocket, trainers on her feet. She hopes he really does want to play football, because that doesn’t require conversation. He answers the door seconds after she answers it, and she really hopes, for his sake, that he wasn’t waiting by the door for her.</p><p>“Hey,” he says, that lopsided grin that she truly has missed painting all of his features with genuine joy.</p><p>“Hey.”<br/><br/>He doesn’t hold the door open for her – that would be weird; she’s spent enough time in this house over the years. Thankfully, he leads her out to the back of the house, through the kitchen and into the garden. It surprises Ingrid that it’s barely changed since the last time she was here – while the bushes have been trimmed and there are new flowers in the planters, the football goal and the basketball net remain faithfully where they always have been.</p><p>“Weird that they never moved anything, isn’t it?” Sylvain asks, closing the back door behind her. “I thought they would’ve gotten rid of everything the second I left, but it’s still all here.”<br/><br/>“Kinda sweet, though,” Ingrid says. “Means we can still play football, at any rate.”<br/><br/>“You know, I will not complain about that.”</p><p>Sylvain kicks the ball towards Ingrid, heading towards the goal. He’s no match for her and he’s well aware of that – he never played sport in school and she was the captain of the girl’s football team for two years. Still, he was better than Dimitri, he always boasted, ignoring that Dimitri had a handicap and still wasn’t much worse than him.</p><p>She kicks it back, the ball easily soaring past his terrible defences and into the goal. Sylvain looks at the ball and shrugs, dribbling the ball back around for them to swap positions. This time, he attempts to score, and Ingrid easily returns what was essentially a terribly off course pass. She lets him have another go, and the next shot is a little more on target (but still easily saved by Ingrid).</p><p>“I’ve missed this,” he says absentmindedly.</p><p>“Well, you were away. And there’s no way you could kick a ball from Enbarr to here,” Ingrid jokes. She has to pick her words carefully, because she could easily ruin their whole relationship here if she says what she actually thinks about the fact they haven’t spoken in so long.</p><p>“That’s not what I mean,” Sylvain says, stopping the ball with his foot.</p><p>“What <em>do</em> you mean?”</p><p>“I mean… I haven’t been the nicest to you in the last year. We’ve barely spoken, and I know that’s my fault, not yours. I read all your messages; happy birthday, happy Christmas. Well done on graduation, hope you’re having a good day.”</p><p>“Too busy with Dorothea to respond to me?”<br/><br/>“Ingrid, no, that’s not it.”</p><p>“Are you sure?” She asks, even though she really doesn’t want to (but she <em>does</em>).</p><p>“What are you getting at?”<br/><br/>“I…”<br/><br/>“Don’t accuse me of things. I thought we were past this,” Sylvain says, which just makes Ingrid even angrier.</p><p>“Don’t accuse you? Everything I’ve accused you of in the past you’ve done! I find it very strange that the second you started going out with Dorothea, you stopped talking to me entirely! Because what, you’re a woman hater, and you can only have one in your life at a time to fulfil your emotional support role?”<br/><br/>“That’s not it at all!” Sylvain says, kicking the ball at the goal, Ingrid returning it without ever taking her eyes off him.</p><p>“Then what is it, Sylvain? We had been best friends forever – literally my entire life. And then the second you get a steady girlfriend, you stop speaking to me entirely, but are okay talking to Felix and Dimitri, because they’re not women?”</p><p>“I just thought it’d be weird, you know, given… our history.”<br/><br/>“Oh, so we kissed one time, and two years after that event you find it weird that it happened?”<br/><br/>“You are twisting my words!”<br/><br/>“Am I?”</p><p>Sylvain looks at her, and Ingrid finds herself feeling sorry for him. Deep down, she knows this is how Sylvain operates – she’s seen it before in action on many other girls over their years. Despite this, it’s working on her – his charms, his puppy dog eyes. She feels like she has no argument against him, even though she has – her own hurt feelings are reason enough to be angry with him now.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he mumbles – again, part of his scheme.</p><p>“For what?” She spits back, finding herself feeling like how she supposes Felix must feel when he’s in one of his bad moods.</p><p>“For… for not speaking to you! Clearly I’ve upset you, and I feel terrible about that!”<br/><br/>“Then why didn’t you do anything about it!” She all but yells, taking a step closer to him.</p><p>“I didn’t know I had upset you.”<br/><br/>“You know, if I was friends with someone for eighteen years, and I suddenly decided to stop talking to them for what I claim to be no reason at all, I’d maybe notice that! Especially when they were still trying to contact me, frequently!”</p><p>“Ingrid, stop yelling at me.”</p><p>“You’re not listening to me! I am <em>upset</em>, Sylvain, and unlike all the girls you hurt in school, this goes a lot deeper than a crush you had for five minutes. I am your <em>best friend</em>!”<br/><br/>“Stop shouting!” Sylvain practically screams, stunning Ingrid into total silence.</p><p>“Sylvain…”<br/><br/>“Dorothea will be back soon. You should probably go.”<br/><br/>“I haven’t even been here for twenty minutes, Sylvain, I need to-“<br/><br/>“No. Please go.”</p><p>“Fine. You’re not willing to listen to a word I have to say anyway, so why should I stay and waste my breath? I don’t know <em>why</em> you thought it was a good idea to ghost me after you started dating Dorothea, but there’s something really weird about it that I don’t like at all. You need to sort out your priorities. Until you have, I don’t want to hear from you.”</p><p>Ingrid storms out through the house, slamming the front door behind her and making her way back up the street. She barely makes it the length of two houses before she can feel her face hot and wet with tears – angry tears, because more than anything else, she really wants Sylvain to understand that she was hurt by him.</p><p>But Sylvain lives in a bubble. Sylvain always has lived in a bubble – his own little Sylvain-land where everyone listens to him and he always gets his own way. In Sylvain-land, Ingrid’s feelings don’t matter – she’s a random citizen under the rule of King Sylvain and his current queen Dorothea.</p><p>Ingrid pulls out her phone, knowing that there is only one person that can fix this absolute mess that seems to be getting worse and worse with every passing day.</p><p>
  <em>{Ingrid} 1:34pm: Had a fight with Sylvain. Could you spontaneously go round to check on him? He’s alone.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>{Felix} 1:35pm: Sure thing.</em>
</p><p>With a sigh of relief, Ingrid continues her short walk down the street – twice as fast as she went up the street earlier, embarrassed by the fact that for the first time since she was six years old, Sylvain has made her cry. And that one was warranted – that was a snowball to the face. This is so much more complicated, and Ingrid doesn’t know if she’s entirely in the right.</p><p>When she gets home, she ignores the greetings from her family and marches up the stairs to her room, followed by her dog. Thankfully, she made her bed this morning, so it’s easy to fall onto it face first. She feels ridiculous, tears still streaming down her face. She shouldn’t be having meltdowns like this over boys at age nineteen, but today has been an absolute rollercoaster of emotions surrounding Sylvain, and she doesn’t like it one bit.</p><p>After an hour, she spares a glance at her phone. There’s nothing from Sylvain, thankfully, but there is a confirmation of his safety and general wellbeing from Felix. He’s only in town for another few hours – he flies out tonight, if her memory serves her correctly. She feels bad now, because she didn’t say goodbye. But it seems to her that Sylvain has already made peace with their relationship, and it’s well and truly over after what she said to him.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sixty pages of freshly printed writing sit on Ingrid’s desk, bound into a neat little clear file. It’s odd, to see her hard work presented in such a way. Everything else she’s worked on for university has been submitted online, but by the archaic rules of submission, her dissertation is bound and handed in to the office. It’s a short trip downtown to campus, and Ingrid isn’t sure she wants to head that way to hand it in.</p><p>Eventually, she picks the file from her desk, and unceremoniously shoves it into her satchel. Five years of work has come to this, and while she’s relieved, and excited for what lies ahead, she mostly feels… tired. This is the end of a degree, and the start of what will hopefully be a long and successful career as a vet. All she needs to do is hand the file in.</p><p>Usually when she heads to class she walks to the main road and takes the tram through the city centre and out the other side. There’s no car parking at all near the university, no matter what building you’re attempting to go to. But today Ingrid knows there will be no students about, and so she takes the car, more to show off her new ride than anything else.</p><p>It’s an early graduation present, and although she protested a lot about it to her family, they insisted that they would take the money from the sale of her previous car as reparations and that would be the end of it. Despite her protests, Ingrid was grateful- her car was on its last legs, and she didn’t even want to think about forking out all that money for another one when she was about to move out.</p><p>It’s the end of an era – Dimitri has moved out, she’s about to, Felix has actually started making money from his streaming career. The only thing missing is Sylvain, Ingrid notes while stopped at a traffic light. It’s almost sad – well, it would be, had they not had that fight before he left the last time. It’s odd to think about, but she does miss him, even if she could never tell him that. It’s a secret she’ll take to her grave.</p><p>Campus in early summer is nice – the grass looks greener than usual, and she can really appreciate the architecture of the university without what feels like millions of students passing through the square on the hour every hour. There are a few people milling about – enjoying the sunshine, cramming for final exams on the lawn where they can discuss answers in peace without a librarian warning them to be quiet. A few people seem to be asleep too, which is all Ingrid can think about.</p><p>She heads into the veterinary science building for what will likely be the last time, and soaks in the weirdly clinical atmosphere. There are no labs on this floor, and yet everything is stark white, with that horrifying smell of too much disinfectant polluting the air. Still, Ingrid has called this place home for the last five years, and it’s a little sad to be saying goodbye to it now.</p><p>Her phone buzzes with a notification – unusual for this time of the day. She lifts it from her back pocket, and raises her eyebrows at the message. It’s from the group chat of this year’s graduating class – the graduation date has been set for the fourth of July. That seems quite soon, Ingrid thinks, but she can feel herself grinning too. It’s not too long until she’s a fully qualified vet, and she’s more than excited at the prospect of being able to call herself that.</p><p>Sliding her phone away once more, she steels her nerves and knocks on the office door, waiting for the familiar ‘come in’ before entering. The people who work in here have known her for five years – she’s always been one of the most enthusiastic students, and was president of the veterinary society for the last two years. They look almost sad as she fills out her paperwork, and hands her dissertation across to them.</p><p>Her fate is in the hands of the professors now – while she has absolutely no chance of failing, there’s still a little part of her that wonders if that dissertation is really good enough to get her one of the top marks in the year. Not that it <em>really</em> matters, because no surgery she applies to will actually care about stuff like that, but it’ll make her feel good about herself.</p><p>She leaves the office with a sigh, and leaves the building with a spring in her step. There’s nothing left to do, and technically she’s now a free woman. She had quit her job of seven years last week, and her freedom is almost bittersweet. Ingrid thrived on routine – class four days a week at varying times, one evening of work during the week and both days at the weekend. Now she has nothing, and she’s not sure how she’s supposed to fill all this free time.</p><p>With job searching, she muses. There has been talk of a few positions opening up around the city, with one of them near the apartment she’s put an application for. It would be ideal – she could walk there, and wouldn’t need to spend anywhere near as much money on petrol as she would to go to any of the other vet surgeries in Fhirdiad. But competition will be fierce, she’s aware, with the class all about to graduate. Nevertheless, Ingrid’s resume is the strongest out of everyone she knows, not that she wants to boast about that.</p><p>But everything is coming together for her. And that’s nice, because it seemed for a while like she was falling behind. Felix has told her – it was because she had chosen a longer degree in the first place. But when Dimitri had a masters, and Felix had a moderately successful streaming career, and Sylvain was off god knows where doing god knows what, it was hard to feel that she wasn’t… not quite on the same level that her friends were.</p><p>Which was a ridiculous thought, in retrospect, because she’s always been the most competent at everything the whole time she’s known the three of them, because they are <em>boys</em>.</p><hr/><p>“We’ll miss you,” Ingrid’s father says, clapping her on the shoulder. Her mother stands close behind him, clutching her hands to his chest.</p><p>“I’m only moving across town,” she tells him with a roll of her eyes. “I’ll come visit. Sunday dinner, every week.”<br/><br/>“Good luck,” her mother says, pulling her into a last hug before she leaves. <br/><br/>Her car is loaded with boxes of her things, clothes, books, knick-knacks she’s collected over the years. Her parents wave her off, standing in the front door. As sad as she is to say goodbye to the house she grew up in, a larger part of her is thrilled at the prospect of having her own life on entirely her own terms.</p><p>She’d stayed at home for the five years of her degree, funnelling money from her part time job into her savings in the hope of moving out as soon as she graduated, and not having to worry about living paycheque to paycheque. Ingrid has always been the most sensible out of her childhood friends, and feels a little proud of herself for managing to be the first one to move out of home on her own money.</p><p>The whole thing reminds her of Sylvain’s less than pleasant departure, she muses as she pulls up to her new building. She hasn’t heard from him since then – almost four years ago. It’s the longest she’s ever gone without talking to him, and what becomes more unusual is that he has largely faded from her mind. She hears Felix and Dimitri talk about him sometimes – he’s still somehow living on his father’s money, now somewhere in Leicester. Ingrid doesn’t know if that means he’s broken up with Dorothea, or if he’s still following her around like a blind puppy dog.</p><p>She’s not sure she wants to know, either.</p><p>Ingrid’s apartment comes together quickly when she tears her mind away from friends she never sees anymore. Books get placed artistically on shelves, cushions tossed on the sofa, a canvas hung on the wall over a table. She puts sheets on the bed, and hangs clothes in the wardrobe. She leaves the kitchen to the end – knowing full well as soon as the rest of the apartment is ready, she’ll make dinner for herself.</p><p>While she waits on rice cooking, Ingrid flicks through her phone, almost dropping it into the rice when she sees one email in particular. It’s from one of the jobs she managed to interview for, and her hands are shaking as she opens it. It’s an email of acceptance, albeit on a trial basis, but Ingrid can feel herself grinning. A stable income with a decently paying job, right out of university. She’s got her grades but no official certificate yet, and likes to think that it’s all her hard work, and not the slight head start she had due to doing a placement in that surgery earlier in the year.</p><p>When she serves herself dinner for the first time in the new apartment, all Ingrid thinks to herself that she really is doing well. Better than some people, she thinks bitterly, as she looks at her phone again and sees a screenshot of Sylvain’s Instagram from Felix of what is possibly the worst painting she’s ever seen. She laughs to herself – she’s almost glad now that he’s blocked her, because then she doesn’t have to see that on her feed all the time.</p><p>She shakes her head, removing the often-intrusive thoughts of Sylvain from her head. He occupies much more space in her brain than she cares to admit. It’s all Ingrid can do to hope that eventually, he fades from her memory entirely, leaving just the vague outline of a childhood friend that she knows she liked at the time, but they drifted apart before things went sour.</p><hr/><p>Graduation day is perhaps the most nervous that Ingrid has ever been. Her high school equivalent was nowhere approaching as bad as this – she stood beside Felix in the line, Dimitri somewhere ahead of them, and shook the principal’s hand as they received certificates commending their efforts – funny, considering that they hadn’t even sat exams yet.</p><p>But today feels different. All she has to do is walk straight across the stage, shake the vice chancellor’s hand and accept her degree. That’s easier said than done, when waiting in the line, Ingrid isn’t even sure she can remember how to walk. But she manages, ever glad that she chose not to wear heels, because that definitely would have ended in disaster. She receives her rolled up degree, and smiles, and walks off the other side of the stage to sit down with her classmates.</p><p>Her parents are here somewhere, but she was too occupied with not falling over her own feet to pay much attention to the audience. She knows Felix and Dimitri are waiting outside – both of them had expressed interest in supporting her as she had supported them when they had graduated. She had been Dimitri’s only ticketholder at both of his graduation ceremonies, and while that was quite sad, Dimitri mostly seemed glad that she was there.</p><p>They’ve planned a dinner for tonight, the three of them, to celebrate finally finishing school. Ingrid has been looking forward to this for two whole years, and has booked a table at an all you can eat buffet, fully intending to take the restaurant up on their all you can eat moniker. Her parents surprisingly didn’t complain about this, probably knowing that Ingrid will definitely be over for dinner within the next few days.</p><p>When the hall lets out, Ingrid’s eyes scan the crowd gathered outside for her friends – notably Dimitri, who’s blonde head is often easiest to spot sticking out over the rest of the crowd. It’s not uncommon for graduating student’s friends to wait outside the hall while their families attend the ceremony, and as such the lawn is hiving with people. Thankfully it doesn’t take long for Ingrid to say goodbye to her parents and spot Dimitri and Felix, but her heart skips a beat in the most unpleasant way when she sees who else is with them.</p><p>She’s surprised she didn’t spot Sylvain’s mop of ginger hair earlier in all honestly. He’s as tall as Dimitri, give or take a few centimetres, and the hair colour is more unusual than Dimitri’s. Ingrid feels her stomach drop as she begins to approach them. Did Dimitri and Felix know he was coming? If they did, why didn’t they tell her? <em>Why is he here?</em></p><p>“There she is,” Dimitri says, clapping for Ingrid as she approaches. “Congratulations!”<br/><br/>“Thanks,” she manages to reply, grinning at Dimitri, glancing at Felix, ignoring Sylvain.</p><p>“The last one to graduate out of all of us,” Felix jabs, and she just rolls her eyes.</p><p>“With the highest grade of degree, and having done something useful,” Ingrid shoots back, a smirk curling the corners of her mouth. “What are you doing, Mr Programmer?”<br/><br/>“Low blow,” Felix mumbles.</p><p>“Hello, Ingrid,” Sylvain says finally. She can practically feel the air go cold. Dimitri and Felix shift uncomfortably on the spot. When Ingrid raises her gaze to meet his eyes, she almost feels bad, because he looks as terrified for this interaction as she feels.</p><p>“Hi,” is all she can muster in response.</p><p>“I’m back in Fhirdiad for a while, so I just thought I’d drop by to say congratulations. I know you’ve wanted this for a long time, and it’s really great that it’s finally happened for you.”<br/><br/>“Thanks, Sylvain,” Ingrid says, a genuine smile appearing on her face.</p><p>“Are you getting photos taken?” Dimitri asks, and Ingrid shakes her head.</p><p>“There’s nothing that I want less than to pose for photos.”<br/><br/>“Maybe Sylvain can take a few?” Comes Dimitri’s suggestion, and Ingrid’s head snaps to look at Sylvain, begging him to say no.</p><p>“Hey, I’m a painter, not a photographer. I can do a few quick snaps, nothing better than anyone else could.”<br/><br/>“Just let him take your picture, Ingrid,” Felix says, rolling his eyes.</p><p>“Fine,” Ingrid relents, passing off her bag to Felix and her phone to Sylvain, straightening out her robes.</p><p>Smiling for photos has never been a problem for Ingrid, but when it’s Sylvain behind the camera and she hasn’t seen him for four years and the time she saw him before that she fought with him, it’s more than a little awkward. Despite his claims that he’s not a photographer, Sylvain gives her instructions about how to stand, to tilt her head, encouraging her to smile.</p><p>The photos are nice, she can admit that. He takes one with Ingrid, Dimitri and Felix, and politely declines a passer-by’s insistence to take a photo of all four of them. Ingrid puts her phone back into her bag, and manages to relax a bit. Things aren’t entirely weird. It could be worse.</p><p>“I’ll be off then. I’m in town for… the foreseeable future, so I’m sure we’ll bump into each other, at the very least,” Sylvain says, offering a small wave to his friends (former friends? Acquaintances? Ingrid isn’t quite sure).</p><p>“Are you doing anything tonight?” She asks before her brain can think that maybe it’s not a great idea.</p><p>“I don’t have any specific plans,” Sylvain offers in response.</p><p>“Do you want to come to dinner with us? I’m sure we can upgrade from a table for three to a table for four.”</p><p>“Are you sure? I don’t want to impose, or anything…”<br/><br/>“Yes. I want you there.”</p><p>“Then yeah, okay. I’ll be there.” Sylvain smiles, and Ingrid immediately regrets her decision, because that smile is so familiar to her, and it’s been years since she’s seen it, a proper Sylvain grin. It’s infectious, and she finds herself smiling back to him. “Let me guess, all you can eat?”<br/><br/>“Where else?” Ingrid laughs.</p><p>“I’ll see you later, then. I won’t be late!” He calls over his shoulder as he walks away.</p><p>“That’s a lie if ever I heard one,” Felix snorts. “He’s never been on time to anything in his life.”<br/><br/>“I thought you two were fighting?” Dimitri asks, resting a hand on Ingrid’s shoulder in a show of support that she really doesn’t think she needs.</p><p>“I haven’t spoken to him in four years. I think our feud is probably over, since… well, since he turned up today.”<br/><br/>“You were mocking his paintings a week ago,” Felix points out. He pauses, and looks at Ingrid, and then to Sylvain’s rapidly disappearing figure. “Wait.”<br/><br/>“What?” Ingrid and Dimitri ask at the same time.</p><p>“I cannot believe this. You <em>like</em> him.”<br/><br/>“I do not!” Ingrid retorts.</p><p>“You definitely do,” Felix laughs. “All that time you two spent together when we were still in school, how annoyed you were when you went to pick him up from the airport and Dorothea was there? It all makes sense.”</p><p>“Hm, I see your point!” Dimitri agrees, earning him something between a glare and a look of approval from Felix.</p><p>“Deny it.”<br/><br/>“I don’t like him. Not like that,” Ingrid states. <br/><br/>“But you did,” Felix presses.</p><p>“Maybe a bit, a long time ago. But I also liked Dimitri a long time ago, and you’re not bringing that up.”</p><p>“You never liked Felix?” Dimitri asks, raising an eyebrow.</p><p>“No, because he’s two feet tall.”<br/><br/>“Another low blow,” Felix says with something approaching a hiss.</p><p>“Look, I invited him to dinner because I feel sorry for him. If he’s here for the foreseeable future, that means that there’s definitely something going on with him and probably his family, and even if we don’t get along that well anymore, I cannot think of anything I want less than Sylvain to continue living with his parents. So if I can get him out of that house for a few hours, then I’m happy to do so.”</p><p>“That makes sense,” Dimitri agrees.</p><p>“Fine,” Felix relents, but his eyes stay narrowed, evaluating Ingrid. She stares right back at him until he realises that she doesn’t care what he’s thinking about her. He relaxes a little.<br/><br/>“I’ll see you all at seven, then. Don’t be late.”</p><hr/><p>To Dimitri and Felix’s credit, neither of them are late. Ingrid was slightly early, and waits patiently outside for her friends, having phoned to ask if it was okay to add another to their booking. Dimitri gets dropped off at the end of the street, and he and Ingrid laugh as they watch Felix drive around the block four times before eventually finding a parking space. Sylvain is late, but that doesn’t surprise Ingrid one bit.</p><p>They make their way inside anyway, and Ingrid can feel herself salivating as she walks past the buffet on their way to the table. Ingrid very pointedly sits beside Dimitri, opposite Felix, in the hopes of ignoring Sylvain if and when he does show up.</p><p>Sylvain saunters in twenty minutes late, which is actually good for him. He makes some attempt at a smile as he sits down, but he looks awkward, not sure where to put his hands, his jacket, his eyes.</p><p>Ingrid makes a beeline for the buffet as soon as she’s able to, stacking her plate high with anything that takes her fancy. Felix is close behind her, but he just picks out spicy foods. When they return to the table, Dimitri and Sylvain go next, disappearing for a few minutes and returning with their own meals. Ingrid doesn’t wait for them to come back before she starts eating, willing away the uncomfortable feeling around the table.</p><p>“So what are you doing home?” Dimitri asks Sylvain, always the one to ask the questions no one else wants to.</p><p>“I was travelling around Fódlan- have been for the past year. I… I don’t know, I sort of missed Fhirdiad. It’s been seven years since I lived here, can you believe that?”<br/><br/>“You have been away for a long time,” Dimitri agrees carefully. He glances at Ingrid out of the corner of his eye, who is concentrating on a stack of ribs, pointedly not listening to the conversation.</p><p>“Well, I’m back now. Living with my parents still, because I can’t get a job. Nowhere seems to be hiring.”<br/><br/>“Everyone in Fhirdiad knows you, and no one would <em>want</em> to hire you,” Felix explains. “How long did your one summer job last, two weeks?”<br/><br/>“Two weeks and three days,” Sylvain corrects, but he doesn’t look too happy about that.</p><p>“Because you got caught out the back with one of the supervisors.”<br/><br/>“She was the same age as me,” he tries to defend, but no one looks convinced, nor do they look like they care anymore. “I’m a changed man, now. I haven’t been on a date in seven months.”<br/><br/>“Wow, what a change,” Felix says sarcastically. “I’m sure all the local women you hurt over your years will be glad to hear about that.”<br/><br/>“I hope they know I’m sorry,” Sylvain says, his eyes falling on Ingrid, who sets her fork down.</p><p>“You and Dorothea aren’t seeing each other anymore?”<br/><br/>“We broke up two years ago. She didn’t want to marry me.”<br/><br/>“Seriously?” Felix snorts. “We all thought she was a gold-digger. Surely she would <em>want</em> to marry you and live off your riches for the rest of her life.”<br/><br/>“I don’t really want to talk about it,” Sylvain mumbles.</p><p>“So that’s why you’re back, then. No woman has looked at you in seven months, so…”<br/><br/>“Ingrid, don’t,” Sylvain sighs. “I thought we were here to celebrate your graduation! Not to rake on me for some past mistakes that I am sorry about.”<br/><br/>He emphasises his sorriness. Ingrid almost feels bad. Almost, but not quite. There’s still a lot in life that he hasn’t apologised for – either in the saying sorry version of the word or the offering an explanation for years of behaviour that is barely explained version.</p><p>Ingrid knows that it’s something to do with his mental health. She’s never known what exactly it is he suffers from – he’s never told her, and she’s never wanted to pry. All she knows is that he was medicated for whatever it was, at least in the past. If she were to hazard a guess, she’d say PTSD. She’s no psychologist, but that’s what it seems like anyway.</p><p>But that’s just a reason. It’s no excuse for his erratic behaviour, his inexplicable hatred for every single woman he’s ever met bar Ingrid and presumably Dorothea. It’s no excuse for making Ingrid traipse around town after him, clearing up the messes he left in his wake. It was one thing in high school, but there’s absolutely no way she’s falling into that trap again now.</p><p>The air at the table is awkward, with Ingrid refusing to look at Sylvain and Dimitri trying desperately to bring the four of them together. Of course he comes back now, Ingrid thinks, when he’s got no other women in his life. He comes crawling back to her like he always does, ready for her to provide him with some sort of affection, even if it’s not romantic. She seethes in her seat, stabbing her dinner with her fork and pretending it’s Sylvain.</p><p>She had felt sorry for him when she had seen him earlier – he had seemed different. But Sylvain will always be the same, chronically unable to change. And maybe it’s selfish of her to want him to change, but she’s always cared so much for him, and the thought of losing him completely breaks her, even if she doesn’t want to admit that to herself or anyone else.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This chapter contains art by <a href="https://twitter.com/puppysicle">puppysicle</a> it is SO CUTE i cry every time I see it</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ingrid has never been the sort of person that has had free time. The whole way through school – including both compulsory and higher education – she’s had a completely full schedule. Now, she’s quit her part time job and has a two week wait before she begins her new one. That’s two weeks of entirely free time, which leaves Ingrid restless.</p>
<p>It’s only been two days since the absolute disaster of a dinner, but Ingrid wishes she could erase it entirely from her mind. It ended with Sylvain leaving early, and Ingrid trying her best not to cry into her cheesecake. She never cries, and certainly not over men, but Sylvain always leaves her feeling so angry every time she sees him, or even thinks about him. She knows that’s stupid, but still, it’s hard to rationale her feelings when she knows she can’t sit down and talk everything out with Sylvain, because he definitely doesn’t want anything to do with her.</p>
<p>She’s been lying in bed for the best part of an hour when her phone buzzes. Once, twice, and then a third time. No one ever double texts her, so assuming it’s urgent, she reaches out to the bedside table to reach for her phone. When she sees who the messages are from, she groans, and drops it onto the mattress beside her.</p>
<p>
  <em>{Sylvain} 9:12am: Hey I know you always get up early</em>
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<p>
  <em>{Sylvain} 9:13am: I’m sorry about the other night. I always manage to mess things up between us.</em>
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<p>
  <em>{Sylvain} 9:14am: Can I take you to breakfast to make up for it?</em>
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<p>Ingrid doesn’t know how to respond to that. Can he make up for it? He’s been alive for twenty-six years, and he hasn’t managed to make up for a single one of his mistakes yet. But the thought of a free breakfast is enticing, and Ingrid wants to make up with him in theory. She rolls over and stares at her phone for a moment, wondering what she should do about this. She could pretend she didn’t see the messages – they had different types of phones, so she was free from read receipts. Or…</p>
<p><em>{Ingrid} 9:21am: Sure. Meet at Conand Avenue diner at 10?<br/><br/>{Sylvain} 9:21am: Cool!<br/><br/></em>The speed at which he replies makes her feel almost sick to her stomach – he was waiting for that response. Ingrid wonders vaguely if he’s home alone. He’s always hated being anywhere on his own, she’s always known this, and she hopes that if that is the case, he’ll be able to cope for the forty minutes it takes her to shower and dress and make her way to the diner.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, Sylvain is waiting outside the diner when she pulls up. Presumably he walked – it’s only ten minutes from his parent’s house.  It makes Ingrid wonder once again if he had been alone – it would make sense, given that was early when he’s normally late to every social event. He looks almost shocked to see her car, and even more surprised when she gets out, approaching him with caution.</p>
<p>“You cut you hair!” He says, and she finds herself smiling. That was one of her activities for her two week break – yesterday she had sat down in the salon and told the stylist to get rid of her long hair and replace it with a shorter cut that sits just above her shoulders.</p>
<p>“Yeah. I like it,” she replies, running her hand through it, relishing how little of it there is left to brush.</p>
<p>“It suits you. You look really nice. Like a more grown up Ingrid.”</p>
<p>“That’s the aim.”<br/><br/>“But driving here? I thought you were all eco friendly?”<br/><br/>“I’ll explain inside. I want to eat!”<br/><br/>“Of course you do.”</p>
<p>He ruffles her hair as she walks past him, and freezes for a moment after he does. She stops, and looks back at him, one hand flattening her hair. He looks shocked at his own action, and stands still in the middle of the pavement. She nods towards the door, and he pulls himself out of that tiny reverie, following her into the comfort of the diner.</p>
<p>It’s quiet – just past normal breakfast time, still too early for lunch. There are a few other customers, but Ingrid and Sylvain slide into a booth, on opposite sides of the table. They place their normal orders – pancakes, maple syrup and sausages for Ingrid, and a fry-up for Sylvain. It’s been the same breakfast orders for years, and sometimes the same for lunch. As annoyed as Ingrid with him, it’s hard not to smile when she remembers all the times they’ve spent in here.</p>
<p>“So, the car?” Sylvain asks as the waitress takes their menus away.</p>
<p>“Yeah, I moved out. So I have to drive to get here now.”<br/><br/>“Oh, seriously? I never knew. Where are you now?”<br/><br/>“Kleimann Drive. There’s apartments all around that area that go for not too much, and it’s not too far from where I’m going to be working.”<br/><br/>“That’s the other side of town! We could’ve met in the middle,” Sylvain argues.<br/><br/>“It’s not too bad, honestly. Ten-minute drive with no traffic, which there wasn’t this morning. Besides, I like this diner. Has a lot of memories.”<br/><br/>“I’m surprised they haven’t refurbished it ever. Could do with a new coat of paint,” he comments, picking at a blank spot on the wall.</p>
<p>“I’m glad they haven’t. Wouldn’t really be the same,” Ingrid says, resting her head in her palm, leaning against the wall.</p>
<p>“You’re right. This place has a lot of nostalgia for all of us, even if I’m really the only one nearby anymore.”<br/><br/>“Weird to think about, isn’t it?”<br/><br/>“Seems like everyone’s moving on in life, and I’m stuck,” Sylvain laments.<br/><br/>“You’re not <em>stuck</em>. You’re just going at a different pace. Maybe you went too fast at first, and now you have to reset. But you’re not stuck.”</p>
<p>“You always have good things to say about me, even when things aren’t good. Even when I’m not good.”</p>
<p>“Don’t say things like that,” Ingrid mutters.<br/><br/>“Are you still angry at me? Because you deserve to be. You’re right to be.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Ingrid admits, finally out loud for the first time in many years. “I am angry with you, and I think I’ve been angry with you for a lot longer than either of us properly realise.”</p>
<p>“I don’t blame you. You have every right to be mad with me for the rest of your life, because I’ve caused you so much suffering with the whole… skirt chasing thing. You didn’t deserve to have to clean up after my messes at all, never mind as long as you did. And although I really hated that fight we had the last time we saw each other, I… I think you were right. I never listen to you.”<br/><br/>Sylvain’s expression is sincere, a look that Ingrid rarely sees on him. It’s unusual, but not unwelcome. It’s a good look on him, truth be told, more attractive than the usual flirty face he has when he’s talking to anyone that might be interested in him. More natural, Ingrid thinks, more like the Sylvain she knew many years ago, before things started to go wrong. He doesn’t even wink at the waitress when she brings their food over, merely saying thank you and smiling.</p>
<p>“Where’s all this coming from, then?” Ingrid asks, cutting her pancakes up, avoiding Sylvain’s eyeline.</p>
<p>“I am back in therapy,” Sylvain answers reluctantly. “At my father’s behest. And I’ve ended up talking to my therapist a lot about you, and he helped me draft an apology. He’s hoping we can move forward. <em>I’m</em> hoping we can move forward.”<br/><br/>“Do you actually know what I was so angry about four years ago? Do you even remember?”</p>
<p>“You were annoyed because when I started dating Dorothea and stopped talking to you. The second one bothered you more than the first one, even if you didn’t specify that. Then you were annoyed because I wouldn’t listen to you when you told me you were annoyed. I… I did find it very overwhelming that you shouted at me about it, but I did listen then, even if it wasn’t in the way you wanted me to.”</p>
<p>“I’m glad you… at least understand why I was upset.”<br/><br/>“And you were right about the emotional support woman thing, though I didn’t realise I was doing that.”<br/><br/>“I was wrong to get annoyed at you about that the other day. Sorry. It didn’t even make sense, really.”<br/><br/>“It’s fine, Ingrid. And… well, I shouldn’t have asked you over that day. I’ve learned a lot about myself. The reason I don’t like being home alone is essentially because I think that something is going to happen. You know… like it did before. But it’s fine! I’m working through everything now.”</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>Ingrid pauses, pancakes almost into her mouth, looking up at Sylvain. He’s smiling now – not the same dazzling, on purpose smile from her graduation, but a softer smile, one that she only ever saw him give to her. Why is he smiling like that now? At her? Ingrid isn’t sure she likes where her brain is going with this.</p>
<p>“Anyway, I have a lot to make up for when it comes to you. And everyone else, but… you, more so than everyone else. You’re more important to me.”<br/><br/>“Felix will be very hurt to hear you say that,” Ingrid says through a mouthful of pancakes, trying her best to not let the blush that’s definitely forming on her face from spreading too far.</p>
<p>“He’ll get over it,” Sylvain laughs. “And I thought you’d like to go to breakfast, because I know you like your food. Better than ‘let’s go for a coffee’, and I buy you one small cup and then you’re hungry all day.”</p>
<p>“That’s a very specific situation you’ve created there,” Ingrid laughs. “But I appreciate it. Both the breakfast, and your apology. And the fact that we can talk again. I… I’ve missed you. A lot. Even though I have spent the last four years being angry every single time I think of you,” Ingrid admits.<br/><br/>“I’ve just felt sad every time I’ve thought of you. Which has been more and more often the last few years. When my dad demanded I came back to Fhirdiad to go to therapy, I thought it’d also be a good chance to… speak to you.”<br/><br/>“I’m glad you thought of me when you were coming back,” Ingrid says, stirring syrup around her plate. “How long have you been back for?”<br/><br/>“Just over a month, actually,” Sylvain admits, scratching the side of his face. “I didn’t want to see anyone, so I didn’t call or text until I heard about your graduation. And sorry for surprising you. I surprised Dimitri and Felix too.”<br/><br/>“Yeah, they said. Well… it was surprising, to say the least. But I’m glad we’re able to move on now.”<br/><br/>“Hopefully we can hang out some other time, then? I know you’ve got a new job, but… well, I’m free almost all the time these days.”</p>
<p>“Of course. We have a lot of time to catch up on.”</p>
<p>“Seven years, huh…”<br/><br/>“Well, five, really. Since we did talk a bit when you first went away.”<br/><br/>“I’m looking forward to catching up on five years of your life then, Ingrid.”</p>
<p>He smiles again, and Ingrid feels her traitorous heart skip a beat. It’s been eight years since that night under the stars, four years since her last horrifying revelation. The reason she keeps forgiving Sylvain, time after time, continues to rear its ugly head, no matter how hard she tries to suppress those feelings. She’s an idiot, plain and simple. She will keep letting Sylvain back into her life, because she is in love with him, and probably always has been.</p>
<hr/>
<p>The summer Sylvain left high school, right before he moved to Enbarr, was the last time the four of them hung out in Felix’s basement. It had been their designated hang out spot for at least twelve years, though most of those hadn’t been through their own choice. Once Ingrid, Dimitri and Felix reached twelve, however, it was the prime place to spend countless hours after school. Homework was finished in a matter of minutes with the motivation of playing video games to help them (and Sylvain, who had taken the classes two years prior and remembered most of the answers).</p>
<p>Tonight, like so many nights before, the four of them take shelter from the rain in Felix’s basement, which has changed dramatically over the years as Felix has gotten more money. Each and every games system he’s ever owned is displayed on a shelf above the TV, and all the games for them line the walls in bookshelves. The current generation consoles are plugged into the TV, and the four of them settle on the floor around a box of rapidly cooling pizza, fighting over Smash Bros characters like they were still ten years old.</p>
<p>“I am playing Zelda,” Sylvain declares, his cursor moving across the screen to claim her.</p>
<p>“I will stick with Isabelle,” Dimitri decides. She had become his favourite since the new game released, and he delighted in knowing that they shared a birthday.</p>
<p>“Ingrid?” Felix asks as she stares at the screen.</p>
<p>“You know I hate this game. I’m no good at it.”<br/><br/>“You’re good at Street Fighter. Just play Ryu,” he points out.</p>
<p>“I don’t play Ryu in Street Fighter though. I’ll be Kirby,” she sighs.</p>
<p>At least Kirby is cute, and she sometimes used to play him back when there wasn’t nearly as many characters to pick from. As usual, Felix settles on Meta Knight. Dimitri loses in a matter of minutes, Ingrid bowing out moments later when Sylvain throws a Pokéball at her and then uses his Final Smash to throw her off. Just like when they were ten, it comes down to Felix versus Sylvain, and just like when they were ten, Sylvain doesn’t stand a chance.</p>
<p>“That was fun,” Dimitri says, “though I wish we could play without Felix sometimes.”<br/><br/>“It’s my house,” he points out. “But go ahead. Pick different characters. You three suck at them.”</p>
<p>This time, Dimitri picks Pichu, Ingrid goes for Lucina, and Sylvain settles on Bayonetta. Sylvain kicks as much ass, literally, as he did before, but the other two do a much better job against him without having to fend Felix off too. It’s a more satisfactory result, even if Felix ends up scowling at the TV while they have it out.</p>
<p>“Mario Kart next,” Sylvain says, and Felix nods in agreement.</p>
<p>“Why do you all just want me to lose at everything? Dimitri is better at me than Mario Kart,” Ingrid sighs.</p>
<p>“It’s because you picked really niche games to be good at when you were eight, and didn’t ever try in any of the other games,” Felix explains, swapping out the cartridges.</p>
<p>“You’re just scared to put Tekken in because you know I’ll beat you in about ten seconds.”<br/><br/>“I don’t <em>have</em> Tekken because I know you’ll beat me.”<br/><br/>“Is the arcade still open?” Sylvain asks suddenly. “We should go there to play Tekken sometime.”<br/><br/>“Nah, it closed about three years ago,” Felix says.</p>
<p>“A shame, really. It was always fun,” Dimitri adds.</p>
<p>“Oh, okay. Maybe you’ll have to buy Tekken yourself, then.”</p>
<p>“Buy a game that Felix won’t let me play because he won’t be able to stream it? I don’t think so,” Ingrid snorts.</p>
<p>“Aw, are you still streaming?”<br/><br/>“It’s his job,” Ingrid laughs. “He couldn’t get a proper job, so now he <em>literally</em> lives in his parent’s basement and is a streamer.”<br/><br/>“You know I’m trying to move out, right? And also that I’m sitting right beside you.”<br/><br/>“She’s just teasing,” Dimitri soothes. “I think it’s a great career. Very modern.”<br/><br/>“Why do you always talk like an old man?” Felix snaps.</p>
<p>“Guess I’m the only one with no prospects of moving out any time soon, then,” Sylvain says. “That’s a bit sad.”<br/><br/>“Just circumstances,” Dimitri assuages. “I’m sure once you find a job, you’ll be out within an instant. Or your paintings could take off!”<br/><br/>“I’d need to be actively painting for that to happen.”<br/><br/>“Why did you stop, anyway?” Ingrid asks, reaching for the last slice of definitely cold pizza. Sylvain sighs, and sets his controller down.</p>
<p>“Not through choice. I have a backlog to post online in the hopes people will buy them – they’re in storage outside town. It’s… a long story, most of which involves my dad meddling in my life.”</p>
<p>“If you want to tell us, we’re here to listen,” Dimitri encourages.</p>
<p>“I don’t want to bring the mood down with my tale of woe. We were having fun!”<br/><br/>“Yeah, then Ingrid started being mean,” Felix huffs. “So you may as well tell us what you’ve been up to in the four years since any of us have seen you.”</p>
<p>Sylvain looks around the room, and finds only supportive looks from his friends. He sighs, and twists his hands together, clearly unsure where to begin, what to say, if he should really say anything at all.</p>
<p>“After I was here before, I left with Dorothea after fighting with Ingrid. You all know about that, I’m sure. Anyway, things were rough then, because I felt really shaky from being home, seeing my parents, seeing you lot, not really getting along well with anyone because I’d taken off. So things weren’t great with Dorothea either.”<br/><br/>“Did she dump you?” Felix asks.</p>
<p>“No, we managed to patch things up. Took a while, but she was willing to stick by me. We both moved out of our dorms into an apartment we rented together. I was painting, working on commissions which were few and far between, and trying to sell my art to galleries, dealerships, even online. I did get most of them shifted eventually, but…<br/><br/>“Anyway, Dorothea graduated, immediately got a job in Enbarr’s opera house when they were doing an experimental drama thing that was entirely in Latin. It was terrible, truth be told. Once that was over, she had a month or so of auditioning for other things, and the opera house came back up again and she got the lead role in their new musical.”<br/><br/>“So your girlfriend was at the top of her game, and you were struggling to sell paintings?” Felix asks again. This time there’s a snort to accompany the snide comment, and Ingrid finds herself raising an eyebrow at him in an attempt to make him stop.</p>
<p>“Look, it was terrible. We barely got to see each other, I was at my studio during the day, she was rehearsing during the day and we got maybe two hours together in the evening before one of us had to go to bed. Then the show started, and she was out at night, often not home until almost midnight. I could tell things weren’t going great, so I tried to book the studio slots in the evening, so we could spend the day together.</p>
<p>“That worked for a while, but I noticed that Thea was… uninterested. She was making more money than me, substantially so. I had been saving for a while – anything that I made that didn’t need to go on rent or bills or food went into savings. I went out and bought her a ring. I made dinner, got down on one knee… I’ve never seen anyone look so disgusted. And that’s saying something.”<br/><br/>“She just… dropped you there and then?” Ingrid asks, astounded by this story. She’s not entirely sure she believes his story, but while Sylvain hasn’t always been the most honest person, his lies are usually about where he was or who he was with, not elaborate lies about proposals that went wrong.</p>
<p>“Yeah. Said she wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment, packed up her things, and left the apartment that night. I haven’t heard from her since. I sold the ring, waited for the lease to be up on the apartment, and left Enbarr. The last two years I’ve been travelling around Fódlan. I spent a lot of time in Derdriu, painting. They’re a lot more agreeable to art there, I found. Nothing like Fhirdiad.”</p>
<p>“Okay, that all sounds terrible, but if Derdriu was so great, why are you here?” Felix asks, but he lacks the bite his previous questions had.</p>
<p>“Some people I was selling paintings to in Derdriu knew the name Gautier and told my father about how great my art was. Long story short, I told him I was in Enbarr to become a lawyer, and I had found work out there, hence why I didn’t come home when I graduated. And I may or may not have told him I was a lawyer, you know…”<br/><br/>“Sylvain,” Ingrid says, a mixture of sad, worried, and annoyed, because although Sylvain has been dealt a terrible hand, he really hasn’t helped himself at all.</p>
<p>“I was struggling in Derdriu, though. While there are art lovers, it’s not the same as in Enbarr where people will buy your work. They just like to look at it. And… there’s someone in Derdriu that I would rather have not seen. That’s why dad freaked out so much when he heard I was there. It was more that than… all the rest.”</p>
<p>“So…” Dimitri says, but trails off, not wanting to say what everyone was thinking.</p>
<p>“Yeah, unfortunately. I bumped into him, but I don’t think he recognised me.”</p>
<p>Ingrid knows that he can only be talking about Miklan. His brother disappeared years ago, after attempting to kill Sylvain. His father never pressed charges even though Sylvain had ended up in hospital, and there were rumours about town that he had disappeared his own son in order to keep up appearances. Clearly Miklan had ended up in the Alliance at some point – a safe distance from Sylvain supposedly.</p>
<p>She doesn’t blame Sylvain for accepting his father’s offer back to Fhirdiad after all of that. Maybe it was a little extreme to force him back into therapy, but Ingrid reckons it’ll do him good in the long run. Child psychologists assigned to him when he was younger never quite got to the bottom of figuring out his behaviour, even if all of them knew that it stemmed from one place – a completely rational fear of Miklan.</p>
<p>“How are you doing now?” She asks quietly.</p>
<p>“Better. Much better, actually. I eat proper meals now, don’t have to worry about where rent is coming from. Though I hate living with my parents. I’m not allowed to move out, though, according to my therapist, in case of… relapse, or whatever.”<br/><br/>“But you’ve just gotten worse the longer you live with your parents,’ Felix points out, saying what everyone else was thinking.</p>
<p>“Do you want to phone the man up and tell him that? I’m serious, Felix, he doesn’t listen to me about that.”</p>
<p>“If you can find somewhere stable to live, do you think your therapist could okay a move?” Dimitri asks. “Because you’re welcome to stay with me for as long as you need.”</p>
<p>“I appreciate the offer, Dimitri, but I’m stuck. Hopefully the time will come soon, and I’ll be able to leave the nest.”</p>
<p>“I wish the best for you. If you need anything, absolutely anything, let me know.”<br/><br/>“Thanks. Now, Mario Party? I’m keen to kick Ingrid’s ass at the one Nintendo game she stands a chance at,” Sylvain says, forcing a grin.</p>
<p>The rest of them mumble their consent unenthusiastically. Felix swaps the game from Mario Kart to Party, and Ingrid watches Sylvain out of the corner of his eye. There’s more to his story, something that he’s not telling them. Now isn’t the time to push, but Ingrid has a horrible sinking feeling that something <em>happened</em> in Derdriu. Sylvain hasn’t seemed exactly the same since he came back, and while he would just say it’s the lack of dating, Ingrid is sure she knows him better than that.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Dimitri’s flat is tiny, and Ingrid isn’t honestly sure how he fits through the door, never mind fitting all his belongings inside. But the lack of space leads it to being cosy, and Dimitri always keeps the place clean and tidy. The whole thing is four rooms. The kitchen is cramped, consisting of an oven and a fridge, a sink and three cupboards. His living room is barely furnished – a TV, sofa and coffee table, and shelves to hold his belongings. Ingrid has never been in his bedroom, but she imagines it’s just a bed and some drawers, maybe a wardrobe if he’s lucky. The bathroom is no bigger.</p>
<p>Though Dimitri lives alone, he’s an absolute disaster at all household tasks. He mastered mopping and brushing and using disinfectant on all surfaces within his first weeks, but he still can’t clean the bathroom properly and woe betide anyone who tastes his cooking.</p>
<p>So occasionally, he phones up Ingrid, and asks her very nicely if she could maybe come over and spare an hour helping him cook something new. The man’s tastebuds are long gone, and Ingrid has never asked why or how, because she suspects it’s something deeply personal that Dimitri has never gone into for a reason. But she’s happy to help, because Dimitri is always open about the textures in food he likes, and it makes her job easier.</p>
<p>Tonight’s dish of choice is a stir fry. There is no possible way that Dimitri can mess this up, she reasons. Ingrid brings a bag of vegetables and shows him the best way to cut them up, both for eating purposes and cooking purposes. He seems rather enamoured by the way that cabbage shrinks in the wok, how the beansprouts change from white to clear as they cook. She brings noodles, and a pour over sauce to her own tastes, and makes sure that Dimitri stirs the meal the whole time, so he knows what he’s doing for next time.</p>
<p>It’s become almost normal for Ingrid to sit down with Dimitri once a week, a meal that they cooked together in front of them. Dimitri eats the whole thing after poking it around his plate for a while – behaviour that Ingrid knows betrays what he’s thinking – there’s something wrong, either with the cooking or with something else. She hopes for his sake that it’s something else – he seemed to enjoy the cooking process.</p>
<p>“This is nice,” he says eventually, setting his fork carefully in the middle of his plate. “Thanks for your help.”<br/><br/>“No problem. I brought stuff to make brownies too, if you’d like to give that a go.”<br/><br/>“Yes, that sounds wonderful.”<br/><br/>He reaches out to take Ingrid’s plate, wandering off into the kitchen. She’s quick to follow him, leaning against the only spare counter space as he does the dishes. He’s clearly avoiding something, but Ingrid’s not sure what it could be.</p>
<p>“Something the matter?” She asks softly.</p>
<p>“Ah… not really?” Dimitri says, flicking his gaze to her momentarily and then back to the dishes.</p>
<p>“Are you sure?”<br/><br/>“Well, the thing is… I saw some news online that surprised me. About Edelgard.”<br/><br/>“Your stepsister? I thought you two had been getting along?”<br/><br/>“Oh yes, we have. The distance helps put old family feuds to rest. But it was a personal matter. She is dating someone that we know.”<br/><br/>“I don’t think I know anyone in Enbarr,” Ingrid hums, drumming her fingers against the countertop.</p>
<p>“Dorothea.”<br/><br/>“Oh! Small world.”<br/><br/>“Should we tell Sylvain?” Dimitri asks, setting the last plate into the drying rack.</p>
<p>“Absolutely not. He definitely does not need to know that the girl he proposed to is now dating your stepsister. And besides, is Edelgard’s family not loaded? Does that not confirm Felix’s gold-digger theory?”</p>
<p>“Maybe,” Dimitri says, though he’s not sure he believes it. “I’m not sure I believe that. Edelgard has become nicer in the last few years. And we <em>barely</em> know Dorothea. She could be different now, for all we know.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”<br/><br/>“Let’s just make these brownies, huh? It’s probably nothing.”</p>
<p>It’s just a packet mix – add water, add an egg. Ingrid shows him how to mix it until it’s not lumpy, and then to mix it again because there are always hidden lumps that you miss. They pour it into the tray, and put it in the oven, and Dimitri insists on sitting on the floor to watch it. Ingrid joins him, relishing in the feeling of childhood that the action brings.</p>
<p>“I was thinking about what Felix said the other week,” Dimitri says suddenly.</p>
<p>“Which thing? He says a lot of stuff.”<br/><br/>“The thing about you liking Sylvain.”<br/><br/>“Oh, seriously? Not you too.”<br/><br/>“I am just saying, it makes sense. You two always have been very close.”<br/><br/>“We’re friends, Dimitri, just like we all are.”</p>
<p>“No one would be annoyed if you were to start dating him,” Dimitri says softly.</p>
<p>“Well, that’s not going to happen.”</p>
<p>“Ingrid-“<br/><br/>His sentence is cut short by a knock at the door. Ingrid jumps up to answer it, despite it not being her apartment. Luckily, it’s only Felix at the door, who seems as surprised to see her as she is to see him.</p>
<p>“What are you doing here?” He asks.</p>
<p>“What are <em>you</em> doing here?”</p>
<p>“I’m lending Dimitri this game,” he says, holding the plastic case up.</p>
<p>“We’re making brownies,” Ingrid explains. “Anyway, come in. If you wait fifteen minutes, you can have a brownie.”<br/><br/>Ingrid steps out of his way so Felix can stalk into the apartment. He looks entirely untrusting until he gets to the kitchen and sees Dimitri sitting on the floor, staring into the oven. He joins him on the floor with no questions asked. Ingrid flops down beside them, breathing in the familiar smell of packet mix brownies. They’re never quite as good as properly homemade ones, but not something that Ingrid will ever turn her nose up at.</p>
<p>“We should invite Sylvain,” Dimitri suggests, pointedly keeping his gaze away from Ingrid. “You know, now that we’re all here, and he’s back in Fhirdiad.”<br/><br/>“He’s not going to come all this way for a brownie,” Ingrid says with a roll of her eyes. “Besides, he doesn’t even have a car anymore.”</p>
<p>“We should anyway,” Felix says, eyes firmly trained on the brownies. “Don’t want him to feel left out.”<br/><br/>Dimitri pulls out his phone and sends a text. With no job and nothing else to do, Sylvain almost always replies quickly. But minutes go by without a ping, and Felix sends his own message. The brownies come out of the oven, and are left to cool on top. Ingrid calls him, leaves a voice message, and joins the other two on the floor once again. There’s no need to sit down here, not really, but the cool of the tiles is comforting against the heat of summer outside.</p>
<p>Eventually, they give up on Sylvain – it’s a Thursday evening, and the chances of him being actually busy are slim. But maybe he’s out and about with someone else – Ingrid would welcome him meeting up with his own friends from school. But there’s something at the back of her mind that suggests that something is wrong. She texts again.</p>
<p>The three of them cut up the brownies, and Dimitri fishes ice cream out of the freezer. It’s a little dramatic as a serving for packet mix brownies, but it makes Ingrid think of fancy restaurants and how you would pay four times as much for just one brownie and just one scoop of ice cream. Felix gets a call, and sets his plate on the counter as he leaves the room.</p>
<p>Ingrid lies flat on the floor, her dessert lone gone, plate licked clean. Dimitri fans himself with the box from the brownies, folded up into a make shift fan. They’re beginning to regret staying beside the warm oven on an equally warm summer’s day.</p>
<p>Felix returns to the room, waiting in the doorway, his face pale. He holds his phone in front of him, staring incredulously at the screen. Ingrid sits up, worry taking over. She can hear Dimitri shift behind her, standing up.</p>
<p>“What’s wrong?” She asks, afraid of the answer.</p>
<p>“That way Sylvain’s mum. He’s in hospital.”</p>
<p>Dimitri’s plate falls to the floor and shatters into a million pieces.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ingrid can’t bear to go to the hospital. Felix goes in her stead, accompanied by his father, who has as much concern for Sylvain’s wellbeing as the three of them. Rodrigue sends a hurried set of instructions from the hospital to Dimitri, and he and Ingrid set out for Sylvain’s house in her car. She seethes behind the wheel, ignoring Dimitri’s concerns that maybe they should stop for a while, there’s no reason that their job can’t wait until the morning.</p><p>But energised with righteous fury, insistent on getting some justice for her friend, Ingrid doesn’t stop the car until she’s parked in Sylvain’s driveway, mere inches away from the bumper of his father’s car. She slams the driver’s door as she gets out, Dimitri making his way much more politely up to the front door.</p><p>Ingrid hammers on the door, and folds her arms as she waits for an answer. It isn’t that late yet, she reasons, but all the lights are off. She knows they’re not at the hospital – Sylvain specifically asked for them to be excluded. How could they have gone to bed when their son is in such a bad state? Ingrid knocks again, louder this time, and a light flicks on upstairs.</p><p>“Ingrid,” Sylvain’s father says, eventually appearing in the doorway. “It’s the middle of the night.”<br/><br/>“It’s not even midnight. Let us in.”<br/><br/>She doesn’t wait for an answer, merely pushing past him and making her way upstairs where she knows Sylvain’s room is. Luckily for her and Dimitri, he keeps it tidy for the most part, and as Dimitri makes his way in, she closes and locks the door behind them.</p><p>“I can’t believe this,” she mutters under her breath, opening the first drawer of Sylvain’s chest of drawers, grabbing the suitcase he keeps under his bed, and beginning to fill it.<br/><br/>“Neither can I. But… it makes sense, in a horrible way.”</p><p>“I know,” she says, pausing with one of Sylvain’s tshirts in her hand. “It’s… horrible. A car accident, they’re calling it. Was it an accident, though?”<br/><br/>“On the driver’s part, yes. I doubt they’ll even be charged.”</p><p>“Will he admit he walked out on purpose?” Ingrid whispers. “To the police, I mean. I know he told Rodrigue…”<br/><br/>“Rodrigue will tell them. His psychiatrist will tell them,” Dimitri reassures her. “But that doesn’t make it any better for him.” He tosses her a pile of jeans, which promptly get packed away.</p><p>“We’re going to need another case.”<br/><br/>“We can carry things if needs be. There might be another box.”</p><p>“I can’t believe they <em>went to bed</em>,” Ingrid says, kicking at the skirting board.</p><p>“You know what they’re like,” Dimitri sighs sadly. “That’s probably part of the reason he did it, to get out of here. You know he wanted to.”<br/><br/>“So you don’t think he was trying to die? You think…”<br/><br/>“That he was trying to make a point? To force himself out of here? Probably.”<br/><br/>“At least he has somewhere to go. At least when he volunteered Rodrigue, he was happy to have him.”</p><p>“I wonder how they’re getting on,” Dimitri mumbles, pulling his phone out of his pocket. There’s a new text, from the man in question. “Sylvain is in for the night, just to be safe. He has a psychiatric evaluation in the morning, and if that goes according to plan, he’ll be discharged to Rodrigue’s care.”<br/><br/>“He’s an adult,” Ingrid sighs. “It’s wild that he has to be discharged to someone’s care.”</p><p>“I know,” Dimitri says, giving up on rooting through Sylvain’s belongings for the time being, and sitting on the edge of his bed. “Do you think he’ll want his pillows?”<br/><br/>“He’ll cope without them. Anything we don’t bring, we’ll replace. I don’t want to spend too much time here. I know they’re listening through the walls.”<br/><br/>Ingrid packs underwear, socks, memorabilia he’s collected over the years. A soft elephant that still sits tucked away under the covers like it always has. Art supplies are in their own box, and a keyboard is propped up, unplugged against the wall. Ingrid pilfers the lamp from his bedside table for good measure – as a ‘fuck you’ to his parents. In the drawer of the bedside table there’s a diary – she packs that too, just in case.</p><p>It takes a few hours, even though they’re rushing, and Ingrid makes no attempt to be quiet on the way back out to the car. Once everything is packed in, she makes sure to rev extra loudly for good measure, before setting off the short distance to Felix’s house.</p><p>Felix and his father are still awake, to no one’s surprise. Rodrigue makes tea as Dimitri and Ingrid haul Sylvain’s things through to the spare bedroom that he and Dimitri always shared during sleepovers as kids. It’s always been a weirdly empty room, but with Sylvain’s belongings beginning to creep into the room, it begins to look more like a home. Ingrid leaves the elephant on the pillow – she knows that Sylvain will be happy to see it, even if he pretends he got rid of it years ago.</p><p>Their tea is ready when they return to the living room. Rodrigue turns the TV on for background noise. Dimitri plays with his fingers. Felix holds his head in his hands. Ingrid stares at the wall.</p><p>“You two are welcome to stay here tonight,” Rodrigue offers. “There’s another bedroom, or you can bring blankets down here. Whatever you’re more comfortable with.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Ingrid manages. It’s only really hitting her now, adrenaline and anger fuelling her through her confrontation with Sylvain’s family. She didn’t even see his mother, now that she thinks about it. She must’ve been at the hospital at some point, though, in order to phone Felix.</p><p>Sylvain walked out in front of a car with the full intention of getting hit by it. It’s the more active of his self-harming attempts. There was no sitting on a bridge and hoping that someone will pass you by in order to talk you down before you actually jump. There was no girl who didn’t like you but liked that you had money and were good in bed. There was just the genuine wish to be hurt, physically, in order to make a change.</p><p>And in a way, Ingrid is <em>relieved</em>. Now they have to listen to him. They have to believe that his parents were at least two thirds of his problems. That if he’s not with them all the time, he can recover, properly, something that he hasn’t truly had the chance to do in the twelve years since the Miklan incident came to a head.</p><p>“I took the piss out of him all the time,” Felix says suddenly, not looking up from the floor. “I was such a dick to him, and…”<br/><br/>“It wasn’t you,” Dimitri soothes. “You know that. He likes you. And he knows that your jokes are just… jokes. And they’re true, most of the time.”<br/><br/>“It wouldn’t hurt to be nicer when he ends up back here, though,” Ingrid suggests.</p><p>“I know. I will. He doesn’t deserve any of this.”<br/><br/>“He’ll make a full recovery,” Rodrigue assures them. “With friends like you, there is absolutely no doubt about it.”</p><p>The idle chatter dies out around four am, and Felix and Rodrigue drag themselves upstairs to bed. Dimitri and Ingrid pull blankets out of an ottoman, and mumble goodnights to each other while gathering cushions around them.</p><p>They all wake equally early. Felix doesn’t look like he’s got much sleep, and is silent all through breakfast. It is Ingrid that is volunteered to pick up Sylvain from the hospital around lunchtime, after Rodrigue spends the majority of the morning on the phone. They can hear the vague shouts of something that must be an argument, Rodrigue making a case for their home and fighting for Sylvain to come home rather than be sent elsewhere. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief when he delivers the news.</p><p>Ingrid hasn’t been to the hospital in years. It’s not a place she’s ever been particularly keen to visit, but this is one of the worst circumstances she could’ve imagined. She parks outside the building where Sylvain will be discharged from, and for once doesn’t complain about paying the parking. She slips out of the car, less angry than she was outside his house in the middle of the night, and makes her way into the reception.</p><p>Sylvain is already there, signing paperwork, shaking hands with a doctor, his jacket in one hand and a plastic bag in the other. He has cuts all over his face, a bruise blossoming purple against the pale skin of his cheek. When he turns to see her and gives her that sad smile, Ingrid can’t help but walk forward and wrap her arms around him, burying her face in her chest.</p><p>“Hey, be careful,” Sylvain jokes. “My ribs are still sore.”<br/><br/>“Sorry,” Ingrid mumbles, loosening her grip but still keeping him in her embrace.</p><p>“Me too,” he echoes. <br/><br/>“No, you have nothing to be sorry for. I’m just glad you’re okay.”</p><p>“Me too,” he repeats. “And not to rush this happy reunion, but I really want to lie down in a proper bed. I got no sleep here.”<br/><br/>“Oh, of course.”<br/><br/>She draws away from him awkwardly, wincing as he pats her on the shoulder. He seems normal, and that worries Ingrid much more than if he seemed visibly distraught. Sylvain has been keeping things inside for so long, and she knows it’s difficult for him to let those things out. But she so wishes he would, because they all want to help him. It’s only a matter of letting him know that.</p><p>The car ride back to Felix’s house is silent. It’s not a comfortable silence either, and any time that Ingrid glances over at Sylvain when they’re stopped at a light, he always looks like he’s about to say something but is instead swallowing his words. She finds herself sighing, and Sylvain makes some sort of breathy sound in agreement.</p><p>The house is empty when they get there – according to a note left on the coffee table, they’ve gone out to get groceries. Sylvain seems antsy, picking at a new scab on the back of his hand. To distract him from whatever’s going on in his head, Ingrid takes the bag from his hand and leads him up to his new room.</p><p>He’s been here before, of course, but there’s something different about it now, knowing that this will be his home for the foreseeable future. He throws his jacket on a chair, sits on the edge of the bed and then lets himself fall backwards. Ingrid sets the bag down, and sits beside him, acutely aware of how close his leg is to her own.</p><p>“You remembered my elephant,” he says eventually, sitting upright, picking up the tired toy and setting it in his lap.</p><p>“It was Dimitri and me that went to your house.”<br/><br/>“It was you that remembered him though, wasn’t it?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Ingrid admits. “I know you said you’d thrown him out a while ago, but… I had a feeling he was still about.”</p><p>Sylvain shuffles a little away from her, and Ingrid stills, wondering if she’s already overstepped some sort of physical boundary between them. It would make sense, she thinks, if Sylvain didn’t want to be around others right now. But then he rests his head on her shoulder, a heavy weight that Ingrid doesn’t mind at all.</p><p>“Rodrigue told me you yelled at my dad.”<br/><br/>“They were <em>asleep</em>, Sylvain. You were in hospital, and they were asleep.”<br/><br/>“Mm. Doesn’t surprise me.”</p><p>“Sorry. You probably don’t want to hear about that.”<br/><br/>“I know what they’re like. But… unless you did anything else, maybe don’t mention it.”<br/><br/>“I kicked the skirting board and revved really loudly as we left.”<br/><br/>“That’s the Ingrid I know and love,” Sylvain laughs.</p><p>Ingrid doesn’t know how to respond to that, so she simply doesn’t, keeping her mouth shut and letting Sylvain’s breathing steady on her shoulder. It’s strange to see him so slow, so quiet. Usually, Ingrid would kill for him to shut up for just five minutes. But not that he has, she isn’t sure that she likes it at all.</p><p>Without looking, his hand slowly finds hers. It starts with a brushing of baby fingers that either of them could easily have put down to simple accident. When it happens again, it’s a coincidence. The third time is a coincidence that may be weird. When Sylvain’s finger hooks around her own, and her palm lifts off her knee, another finger snakes around, until all five are interconnected with all of her own.</p><p>Neither of them say a word. Ingrid isn’t sure what to make of this – he’s not well, she reminds herself, he’s in no place to be flirting, even if that’s his usual coping mechanism. This is different. He’s anchoring himself to her, and though that might not be the most sensible idea, she’s willing to let him for the time being. If she lets him do that, at least he won’t float off to some place where she won’t be able to find him again.</p><p>Sylvain flinches at the sound of a car in the driveway, wheels crunching on gravel. The front door clicks open and shut moments later. Carefully, he withdraws from Ingrid – first his head, then his hand, one finger at a time. From where he sits, not too far from her, but far enough that she doesn’t like it, he regards her with a curious look. This isn’t a look that Ingrid can ever recall seeing on his face before, and she’s not sure what the quirk in his eyebrow means, or how he tightens his jaw. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything – it wouldn’t be the first time she’s read too much into Sylvain.</p><p>“We should go downstairs. Make our presence known.”<br/><br/>Ingrid nods. Sylvain tucks the elephant under the covers of the bed, chuckling at the sight of its trunk poking out over the green trim. He holds the door open for her, but doesn’t say anything, nor look at her as they walk downstairs. Ingrid takes a deep breath – now is <em>not</em> the time to be getting confused over Sylvain. His needs come before hers. Maybe in time they’ll be able to cross that bridge.</p><p>Rodrigue shoos Sylvain into the front room as soon as he sets his eyes on him. That room is barely used, only for special occasions, and Ingrid knows that something must be about to happen. She makes her way into the kitchen, where she finds Felix, alone, putting away the groceries.</p><p>“Dimitri had to go to work,” Felix explains.</p><p>“I guessed.”<br/><br/>“Are you working?”<br/><br/>“Day off. In again tomorrow morning.”</p><p>“Guess it’s nice having a bit more normality around your hours now, isn’t it?”<br/><br/>“Yeah. I don’t have to work night shift for the foreseeable future, either.”</p><p>Ingrid sits down on a stool at the breakfast bar, gaze flashing between her hands and Felix, who stares blankly into the cupboard, a bag of pasta in one hand and a jar of curry sauce in the other.</p><p>“Hey,” she says quietly, jumping him out of his stupor. “It’s going to be okay.”<br/><br/>“I know,” Felix sighs, finally setting the things in their places on the shelf. “I’m just… worried. About him. You know… with everything. I don’t know, I’m not good at this stuff.”<br/><br/>“You don’t have to be,” Ingrid soothes. Felix is clearly frustrated. He’s never been the most articulate, and isn’t great at helping other people when they’re in crisis. But she knows he means well. “Just be there for him. That’s what he needs more than anything. Or leave him alone when he wants to be.”<br/><br/>“He doesn’t like being alone,” Felix points out. Ingrid knows this all too well.</p><p>“Things might change. I <em>hope</em> things change, because he can’t keep going on like this. It’s ridiculous. And I mean that in a way… a way that wants the best for him.”<br/><br/>“I know. It’s so hard to… ugh. I don’t know. I wish all this just never fucking happened in the first place.”<br/><br/>Felix slams a tin into the cupboard with force, and then glares at it, his hands balling into fists at his side. He looks exactly how Ingrid felt last night, full of that need to set things right for Sylvain when it seemed like no one else had been at all.</p><p>“It’s going to be weird having someone else around, too,” Felix mumbles. “It’s only been me and the old man for nearly ten years now.”<br/><br/>“God, has it really been that long?” Ingrid murmurs, knowing exactly what he was alluding to.</p><p>“Yeah. I’m… well, I’m glad if it were anyone here, it’s Sylvain.”<br/><br/>“You’ll get on fine,” Ingrid agrees. “It’s as strange an adjustment for him as it is for you.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Felix says quietly. “I know. I’ll be here for him, no matter what.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Life becomes busy at intermittent points in everyone’s life. Ingrid, for the past month, has felt like she hasn’t stopped once. She’s perpetually tired, between her job, and living on her own for the first time, and worrying about Sylvain. The latter one is the least important – Sylvain has other people to worry about him, and wouldn’t mind if she took a day off from worrying.</p><p>She doesn’t want to admit she worries about him. For the five years they were in high school together, her sanity was hanging on by a thread as she put up a cool façade of a woman who had it all together – even at eleven. She saved face for Sylvain, and berated him when they walked home together. To tell him now that she’s worried about him feels like betraying her old self.</p><p>Which is ridiculous, because she’s not that girl. She hasn’t been that girl in a long time. Ingrid isn’t sure she’ll ever stop berating Sylvain, because she doubts he’ll ever stop doing stupid things. But she would just like to be open with her worry, to tell him to his face that she’s concerned, and maybe if she gets it off her chest, out loud, her worrying will lessen.</p><p>Logically, the most sensible person to tell about this concern that is eating her alive isn’t Sylvain himself, but probably Rodrigue. He’s always had a friendly ear to lend when any of them have needed it. Felix has never once used his services, but Dimitri swears that Rodrigue is the best listener and advice giver in Fhirdiad. She’s spoken to him a few times herself – all minor things. But he has so much on his plate at the minute, and Ingrid isn’t convinced that she should be bothering him with such a menial thing as “I’m worried about Sylvain”. They were all worried about him – that was obvious.</p><p>She googles ways to stop worrying about things out of your control, because for a split second that sounds like a good idea. But it quickly becomes apparent that the internet will not be her friend on this matter, so she closes the browser and her laptop and instead picks up her phone and invites all her friends around on Saturday night, knowing that none of them have a good reason not to be there. And besides, none of them have actually been to her apartment yet.</p><p>Felix tries to argue – this is to be expected. Surprisingly enough, it is Dimitri that forces him to change his mind. He also offers to pick both Sylvain and Felix up, who accepts the invitation, and Sylvain says he’ll pay for whatever food they want. Ingrid bites her tongue to stop her from replying with a snide comment about not having any money. It’s an old habit, teasing him, and maybe it’s a habit that needs to stay, because Sylvain could probably do with things being as normal as possible.</p><p>But just in case, she doesn’t say anything other than a thanks, which is echoed by the other two. And when Saturday night rolls around, Sylvain shows up at Ingrid’s door with his shirt mostly unbuttoned and sunglasses on top of his head, ready to party. Felix insists that he hasn’t been drinking, something he was told not to do, they’ve been together all day. Sylvain explains that he’s just in a party mood, and seems almost disappointed when Ingrid says they’re just going to watch a movie.</p><p>Felix claims the beanbag – he always claimed the beanbag on the rare occasions that they hung out at Ingrid’s house as kids, and she brought it with her for that reason. Dimitri asks politely if he can sit in the armchair because it looks like it has good back support, and Ingrid laughs and tells him he definitely should sit there, since there’s no way he can get support from her sofa.</p><p>It’s an old second hand thing, with cushions that are too soft and worn patches in the upholstery. Regardless, Ingrid thinks it’s rather quaint. It only seats two, and so she ends up beside Sylvain. He has always had a tendency to spread out, legs in front of him, arms wherever is furthest from his body. Ingrid remedies this by curling up in the corner, tucking her legs underneath her with her box of takeaway Chinese in one hand and the TV remote in the other.</p><p>It used to be tradition to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy every summer. It’s been a while since they’ve done that, and as soon as Ingrid turns the movie on, she glances around the room to see three familiar smiles. Some of her worries fade away, and she relaxes into the corner of the sofa, eventually uncurling herself and putting her feet in Sylvain’s lap instead. He only raises an eyebrow at first, before fully turning his attention back to the TV.</p><p>The apartment is silent, aside from the sounds of the movie. It’s rare to hear them this quiet – usually Felix is arguing with Dimitri about something unimportant, or Sylvain is talking about his latest conquest. Ingrid supposes that’s what happens in time – things change, for better or worse. They’re not the same people they were in the summers in high school, putting together their pocket money for one pizza between them, collecting coupons for free garlic bread and drinks, complaining when they didn’t get a fair share of two slices of pizza each.</p><p>When the credits roll to the sound of Enya’s voice, everyone gets up to leave. Dimitri thanks Ingrid for hosting, and Felix for once offers to put all the rubbish in the bin. It is Sylvain that doesn’t say anything, hovering uncomfortably in the middle of the room. As the three of them go out the door, Ingrid following to see them off, Sylvain pauses in the doorway.</p><p>“Thanks,” he mumbles, glancing over his shoulder as Felix rolls his eyes and pulls Dimitri away, down the stairs.</p><p>“No problem. It’s been a while since we watched that all together, right?”<br/><br/>“Too long,” Sylvain agrees.</p><p>“You should catch up with them. They…”<br/><br/>“They think there’s something going on between us,” Sylvain laughs.</p><p>“That’s what I was going to say. Ridiculous, right?”<br/><br/>“Right.” Something flashes across his face for just a split second, before it goes back to that fixed grin. “I’ll see you soon?”<br/><br/>“Of course.”</p><p>It’s strange, when they all leave, how empty her apartment feels.</p><hr/><p>A knock comes on Ingrid’s door in the evening, as she’s just gotten into her pyjamas and is contemplating when it the best time to go to bed. It’s a strange phenomenon – no one has ever knocked on her door when she’s not been expecting anyone. She answers the door cautiously, putting the door on the latch and hiding behind the door in case it’s one of her neighbours who she would rather not see her in her pyjamas.</p><p>It’s Sylvain, much to her surprise. She opens the door properly to him, not caring about how he views her. He’s got a backpack slung over his shoulder, and a weird looking smile plastered on his face. Across the hall, one of her neighbours waves to her. She waves back, and ushers Sylvain into her apartment.</p><p>“What are you doing here?” Ingrid asks, before adding, “how are you here?”</p><p>“I took two busses.”<br/><br/>“That’s not a sensible idea. You can just phone me if you want to talk, you know that.”<br/><br/>“I know,” he smiles. “But I wanted to see you.”<br/><br/>“Did something happen?”</p><p>“Sort of,” Sylvain says, settling down on the sofa. Ingrid cautiously takes a seat beside him keeping her hands folded in her lap. “Things always seem to happen to me.”</p><p>“If you want to talk about it, I’ll listen. But if you just want to… have a cup of tea, or watch a movie, that’s cool too.”<br/><br/>“Can we have tea and talk about it?”<br/><br/>“Of course,” Ingrid says with a smile.</p><p>She leaves him where he sits, full of nervous energy, taking up a small amount of space compared to usual, compared to the other night. She makes two cups of tea, glad that she had actually bought a set of mugs now that she has a visitor. She hands Sylvain his tea – milk but no sugar – and her concern that she was certain she had gotten rid of returns when he practically grimaces in response.</p><p>“So much has happened this year,” he sighs, tilting his head back to stare at the ceiling once again. “I mean, for you, it’s all been good things. But bad stuff seems to follow me around.”</p><p>“I… it’s not been all good for me. I mean, I’ve spent the last month worrying about you.”</p><p>“Sorry. You shouldn’t be.”<br/><br/>“But I <em>am</em>. And… well, I don’t know. I always have. It’d be weird to stop now.”<br/><br/>“Can I talk to you about… Derdriu?”<br/><br/>“Of course. You can tell me anything, Sylvain, you know this.”</p><p>“I know. Miklan was in Derdriu. I saw him in a coffee shop. It’s been years since he got kicked out, went on the run. And of all the places he turns up, it’s getting a croissant and a latte at ten a.m. in a tiny Derdriu café.”<br/><br/>“You said… he didn’t recognise you. Before, when you were talking about it with Felix and Dimitri too.”</p><p>“He did,” Sylvain says quietly. “He nearly started a fight in that café. He got arrested, and my father found out, and requested that the police kept it quiet. He knew exactly who I was, and came for my neck. Didn’t get it, clearly, but he did spill his coffee down me, which hurt.”</p><p>“At least he’s… gone. Away. And you’re back here, where you’re safe,” Ingrid says, taking a sip from her mug.</p><p>“Yeah, I guess. But it’s the sight of him that… triggered all those bad memories. Not even the fight. That was more embarrassing than anything else. But I couldn’t even walk past that café anymore without thinking about Miklan, and the fact that he tried to kill me multiple times. And over what?”<br/><br/>“Miklan is messed up. That’s all there is to it.”</p><p>“I’m messed up too, Ingrid.”<br/><br/>“No you’re not,” she insists. “Not like him.”</p><p>“But how do you know that?” Sylvain pleads, turning to face her. His eyes are full with tears, threatening to spill over at any minute.</p><p>“Because I know you! I’ve known you my whole life, and I knew Miklan too. And you two are nothing alike. You’ll never be alike. Sylvain, you are one of the strangest, most inconsistent people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. You’ve done some really stupid things over the years, but they’ve really all been… to hurt yourself. Not to hurt other people.”</p><p>“Ingrid, I…”</p><p>“Now, are you going to tell me why you’re really here? Because as I say, Sylvain, I know you well, and I know you didn’t come here just to talk about that.”<br/><br/>Sylvain sighs, and curls up on the sofa. He looks a little strange with his knees tucked underneath him – at six feet tall, he has too much leg to be able to sit like that with any semblance of elegance.</p><p>“Felix… said some stuff. Snapped a bit. I don’t know, it upset me for no reason. I just… wanted to stay here tonight. If that’s okay with you.”<br/><br/>“As much as I don’t mind people staying over, there’s nowhere for you to go. I don’t have any spare blankets, and you’re too long to sleep comfortably on the sofa,” she jokes, poking him with her toe. “What did Felix say?”</p><p>“It doesn’t matter.” He turns his head away, sets his mug of tea, half finished, on the floor. He’s clamming up, and Ingrid’s expression of humour turns quickly into one of concern.</p><p>“Sylvain,” she gently coaxes, until he unfurls himself, planting his feet firmly on the floor.</p><p>“He said something about how none of this would have happened if I had just stayed in Fhirdiad in the first place. And… I know he has a point, and he was joking, really, but it still hurt, you know?”</p><p>“It’s not necessarily true. You never know what would’ve happened. True, you might not have seen Miklan in Derdriu, because you might not have been in Derdriu, but… I dread to think what might’ve happened if you were in your parent’s house for all those years.”</p><p>“It gets worse,” Sylvain says morosely. “I said I was going out for a walk to clear my head, and I had brought my bag. He made some offhanded comment about running to see you so you could fix my problems again. I… I wasn’t even planning on coming here. I was just going to walk around the block a few times and go back in. Next thing I knew I was on the bus.”<br/><br/>“I’m going to kill him,” Ingrid sighs, taking another mouthful of tea while she thinks of what to say next. “We had a long talk when you got out of hospital about how he was going to look out for you, he was planning to be kinder. I guess… well, it’s Felix. He’s just like that, and though I think it sucks, it’s going to take a very long time for him to get over it.”</p><p>“I know,” Sylvain sighs. “He just… it’s not even me. If he was making comments about me all the time, I could handle it. But he’s making all these remarks about you.”<br/><br/>“Me?”<br/><br/>“Yeah. Well, not you… more like you, in relation to me. Talking about how angry you were with me, and when I explained that we’d talked things out and were cool about it, he… didn’t believe me.”<br/><br/>“We are cool,” Ingrid insists. “Aren’t we?”<br/><br/>“Of course! But Felix doesn’t want to… believe that. Even though he also thinks that there’s something going on. Maybe me coming here is just fuelling that fire.”</p><p>“Maybe,” Ingrid says quietly.</p><p>It’s probably true – Sylvain running into her arms at the first sign of a crisis is probably not a good thing, but she’s so used to it now that it feels like second nature. And she won’t lie to herself, spending all this time with Sylvain is just making her feelings for him grow. She’s not going to make a move on him, though, not while he’s in this fragile mental state. He has better things to be worrying about other than how she feels about him.</p><p>All he needs to know is that she feels positively, because she’s more than happy to keep him as a friend for the rest of her life if that’s what he wants. However, that conviction doesn’t stop her from wondering if there’s any chance he feels the same. The feeling of his head on her shoulder, his fingers intertwined with her own is still so familiar to her, etched into her brain, as is the soft smile that she’s never seen him give anyone else.</p><p>Tonight, after an awkward silence of a few minutes, in which both of them finish cups of tea that would have otherwise been left alone, Sylvain shifts slightly in his seat. He holds an arm out to her, tilts his head. She moves closer to him, their knees bumping into one another. His arm wraps around her shoulder, and this time her head rests on his shoulder. They’re close enough that he’ll definitely be able to hear her heart beating, faster than it should be. Sylvain sighs.</p><p>“There isn’t anything going on between us, right?” He asks.</p><p>“Right,” Ingrid answers without missing a beat.</p><p>“You’re my best friend.” He sounds like he’s trying to convince himself.</p><p>“Right,” she echoes.</p><p>“Thanks for always being there for me.”<br/><br/>“I always will be.”</p><p>Sylvain shifts a little further, and looks at her, dead in the eye. For a moment, Ingrid wonders if something is going to happen, if all that talk about nothing happening was just for nothing and he was just going to break twenty-three years of friendship like it was nothing.</p><p>But then he retracts himself entirely from her, getting up, lifting his bag. She stands too, in front of him, looking up at him as he fumbles over his words, opening and closing his mouth as he tries to figure out what to say. At least he doesn’t look like he’s about to cry anymore, she thinks, but she’s not sure this expression is really much better.</p><p>“I should go.”<br/><br/>“Let me drive you, at least. It’ll take you ages to get home at this time of night.”<br/><br/>“You’re in your pyjamas,” he points out. “Which are very cute, by the way.”<br/><br/>Ingrid rolls her eyes – they’ve got a dog on the top and paw prints on the bottoms, and are well worn. She disappears into her room for a few minutes, throwing on the first jeans and t-shirt she can get her hands on, and lifting her jacket off the peg in the hall. She motions to the door, and Sylvain follows her outside, waits while she closes the door, and walks quietly down the stairs to her car.</p><p>The drive home is completely silent. Neither of them say a word the whole way – Ingrid keeps her eyes firmly on the road, while Sylvain stares at his knees. When they pull up outside Felix’s house, Sylvain seems hesitant to get out, until Ingrid turns to him with her best attempt at a smile.</p><p>“Go on. Tell Felix if I ever hear of him shit talking me again, or you, for that matter, I’ll personally kick his ass.”<br/><br/>“Hopefully he’ll take the hint,” Sylvain says, his usual smile returning to his face.</p><p>“Goodnight,” Ingrid calls after him as he gets out of the car.</p><p>“Thanks, Ingrid.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ingrid hates shopping. She’s never been any good at it, and her fashion choices have received comments from her friends and colleagues. At least she has a uniform at her new job, saving her the effort of having to pick out an outfit every day. But she still has to wear shoes, and that means buying new shoes, because her shoes she wore for training in university are practically worn out.</p><p>She walks into the city centre, eager to get herself moving. She has the whole weekend off, and celebrates internally with a few kilometres of exercise. Shoes are really the only thing on her list, but the thought of having lunch at one of the nicer places that don’t deliver to her apartment calls her name.</p><p>She gets her shoes, the same ones as last time, and contemplates just walking back to the apartment with the shoes and eating food that’s already in the apartment. It’ll save her money, she reasons, when things are tight enough as it is. As she hovers in the middle of the street, she sees a familiar red head in the distance, heading in her direction. If there’s one person she doesn’t want to see right now it’s Sylvain, and she curses her terrible luck as her legs make the decision for herself.</p><p>She takes off in the opposite direction as fast as her legs will take her. Very mature, she thinks to herself, running from her problems. And Sylvain isn’t even a problem, not really. It’s just that she’s got all these thoughts and feelings that surround him, and he pops into her head even when he’s not relevant. It’s childish. It’s the sort of thing young kids do, run away from their crushes so they don’t have to see the blush on their faces.</p><p>Ingrid wonders if she should just tell him. What’s the worst that can happen? He’ll likely reject her, and then she can move on. But what if he returns her feelings? Maybe that’s worse. She’s never planned for that, in all her daydreams about what to do about Sylvain. He’s still not well, so Ingrid doesn’t want to put that on him. But this is a lifelong illness, and Ingrid understands that, likely better than Sylvain does himself.</p><p>Sylvain is Sylvain. If she does tell him, she knows what she’s getting herself into. And really, it’s not that much different than now. They’re close already, and all that it means is that they can hold hands without the weird guilt, or the fear of someone walking in on them with his head on her shoulder. Maybe she’s worrying too much.</p><p>She’s definitely worrying too much, Ingrid realises, when she reaches her apartment without really realising she’s gotten that far. She throws her new shoes on her bed, deciding that she’ll deal with them later. She makes lunch, using almost wilted vegetables and bread that’s gone slightly hard. It’s a bit sad, but she eats it anyway, because food is food, and she’s hardly going to complain about it.</p><p>Mid-evening Ingrid decides that she needs to talk to Felix. He’s been making snide comments about her relationship with Sylvain for over a month now, observations that turned out to mostly be correct, even if Ingrid didn’t want to admit it at the time. Felix always gives her tough love on the odd occasions when she did come to him for advice. He’s always in the house, at least, and when she sees he’s not online streaming, she makes her way over to his house.</p><p>Of course, this is where Sylvain is, and she just has to pray that she can talk to Felix without Sylvain or Rodrigue figuring out what’s going on. She doesn’t <em>not</em> want to talk to Sylvain, and all being well she will talk to him before she leaves. But it is Felix that she needs to speak to, not Sylvain.</p><p>Ingrid knocks on the door, and waits patiently. The street is quiet, and she can hear a shuffling from inside. Sylvain appears at the door. Ingrid’s heart sinks and rises at the same time, creating a queasy sensation in her stomach.</p><p>“Hey, Ingrid!”<br/><br/>“Hi. I’m just here to see Felix. I need to talk to him.”<br/><br/>“Well, you’re going to have to just text him, because he’s not here. Rodrigue isn’t either. They’re away for the evening.”<br/><br/>“And you’re here alone?” Ingrid asks, knowing full well that Sylvain has never enjoyed being home alone.</p><p>“Yes. Well, it’s only for a few hours. It’s part of my therapy to stay home alone, actually. For short periods of time. He wants me to be able to move out independently at the end of the year.”<br/><br/>“Oh, that’s great,” Ingrid says. “I’m glad to hear about that.”<br/><br/>“I was about to go for a walk, though. He says it’s a good idea to break things up, especially if I get at all overwhelmed. Do you want to come with me?”<br/><br/>It’s not a good idea, not when she’s feeling like this. But he’s smiling at her, like he did in the diner, like he did in Felix’s house, like he did in her apartment. And Ingrid has always been weakest to his charms, even if she’s always been the best at pretending they don’t work on her.</p><p>“Sure,” she agrees, her voice practically a whisper.</p><p>They fall into step, side by side. The sun has mostly set, the streetlights flickering into life with their fluorescent orange glow cascading over both of them, settling them alight. It’s just like that summer in high school, Ingrid thinks, except it’s early September and she’s no longer a child. Sylvain looks down at her, and gives her that grin, and Ingrid almost laments that this isn’t that summer anymore.</p><p>“How’s work?” He asks.</p><p>“Good. How’s… um…”<br/><br/>“I’m doing okay, and that’s what’s going on in my life at the minute. Felix hasn’t been a dick in a while, and that’s always a good start. I don’t know, really. It feels like things are really looking up for me.”<br/><br/>“I’m really glad to hear that,” Ingrid says honestly. “And I’m… I’m proud of you. Is that weird?”<br/><br/>“No, not really,” Sylvain says, almost sadly. “It’s nice to hear. Not something that really gets said a lot to me.”<br/><br/>“Well, I am,” she asserts. “You’ve come so far in the last few months. I… well, I missed you when you were away a lot, and it’s nice to have you back. Properly back, I mean. It’s like, the seven-year-old Sylvain, but a lot taller and more interesting and stuff.”<br/><br/>“I feel like I’m more me now. That feels really weird to say,” Sylvain admits. “But I mean it. It’s… like I’ve figured out who I am. What I’m doing with my life. I’m going to try and sell some of my art again, the stuff that’s sitting in that storage locker outside of town. Then… hopefully I’ll be able to start painting again. Because I really love it, and I haven’t picked up a paintbrush in… four months, maybe?”<br/><br/>“Maybe I’ll commission you,” Ingrid jokes. <br/><br/>“I’d love to paint your portrait,” Sylvain says, and Ingrid is glad for the dark to hide how quickly her cheeks redden.</p><p>“No you don’t.”<br/><br/>“I mean it! You have a very unique face. It’s… round and angular at the same time. And you have really strong arms. I think that would be fun to paint. And your hair is fluffy and cute at the moment. It’s transfer well into oil paints.”<br/><br/>“Don’t say things like that,” Ingrid mumbles, making sure that she keeps her gaze firmly on the pavement ahead of them.</p><p>“Don’t put yourself down, Ingrid. I think you’re beautiful.”<br/><br/>“You’ve said that before,” she remembers.</p><p>“Because it’s true. Anything I said to you that summer, or any other time, has been from the heart. I know I’ve been an asshole in the past, but I’m trying to make things up now. I mean every word I say.”<br/><br/>“It’s okay, Sylvain. You just caught me off guard.”</p><p>She spares a glance at him from the corner of her eye. He’s got that same smile on his face again, one that makes her melt on the inside. She knows that’s a smile meant solely for her, though at the same time she doubts that he’s never used it on any other girl. He’s a philanderer, she reminds herself staunchly. He may have not dated in nine months, and he might be in therapy, but Ingrid reminds herself, for her own sake, that she’s just the latest in a long line of girls.</p><p>But he mentioned that summer. It’s been seven years, and a few months, since their kiss under the stars. At the time, in the spur of the moment, Ingrid thought that this was it, that this was their chance. That maybe, Sylvain had changed now that he didn’t have the pressure of being the school’s ill-reputed flirt. She had never kissed anyone before that, and he was gentle with her and guided her through what would have otherwise been an awkward and uncomfortable bumping of noses.</p><p>She still thinks about that, sometimes. It was so long ago, but she can remember it like it was yesterday. Maybe she thinks about it too much. It’s a strange sensation, that lingering tingling on her lips, days, months, years after the event. For all those years, she thought that it was just her, a stupid lapse in her judgement. She should never have let him get so close to her. She never should’ve given in to his winks and his arm slung around her shoulders and the way he ruffled her hair and when he called her beautiful.</p><p><em>But he mentioned that summer. </em>Which means that he’s still thinking about it too. It’s not just her that’s caught up in the past. Ingrid and Sylvain. Sylvain and Ingrid. Oh god, she thinks, it’s not just her. She slows down as she comes to this realisation. He matches her pace, not saying anything regarding how she’s suddenly gone quiet and is staring at her trainers, pulling at a rag nail on her finger.</p><p>Sylvain thinks about that too. Okay, they hung out a lot that year, just the two of them, and he doesn’t necessarily think about the kissing. But maybe he does? Maybe he thinks about the way he held the back of her head, how she tangled her fingers in his hair – it’s longer now, and she wonders how it feels. Get those thoughts out of your head, she reminds herself, you don’t really know what’s going on.</p><p>Sylvain begins to hum beside her, some tune she vaguely recognises. She continues to panic, wondering if he’s noticed how she bounces on every fifth step because she’s so full of nervous energy. They’re just friends. They’ve always been just friends. They will always be just friends, because there isn’t anything more that she wants in her life other than to remain friends with Sylvain and Felix and Dimitri until they’re all old.</p><p>Maybe he just thinks about that summer, those fateful two months, in the way she probably should. Ingrid doesn’t understand Sylvain, has never pretended to know exactly what’s going on in his head, and even though she <em>says</em> she knows him, that’s all a lie, because does anyone really know Sylvain? Does he? Maybe he just thinks of her as a friend, because friends also go look at the stars in old fields, and go to McDonald’s at three in the morning and go bowling and laugh when the other person’s ball goes into the alley.</p><p>They’re just friends. And that’s all they’ll ever be.</p><p>“Are you okay?” Sylvain asks eventually. His voice is soft.</p><p>“Yeah.”<br/><br/>“You’ve been really quiet for a few minutes now.”<br/><br/>“Just got a lot on my mind.” It’s not a lie.</p><p>“Anything you’d care to share?”<br/><br/>“It’s not important, really. Just… some stuff.”<br/><br/>“Funny how things are always just stuff.”<br/><br/>“That makes no sense, Sylvain.”</p><p>“Sorry, Ing. I’m… tired. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about stuff.”</p><p>“I can tell,” she laughs.</p><p>“Just… thinking a lot about where I was a while ago, and where I’m going. And how I like everyone who’s by my side now.”</p><p>Ingrid stops in her tracks, and reaches up to Sylvain’s face, pulling it down towards her own. Their lips meet for the first time in eight years, and yet it feels the same as that kiss under the stars. This setting is a lot less romantic – along the block from Felix’s house, under streetlights instead of stars. But the stars are still there – it’s just that neither of them can see.</p><p>Sylvain kisses her back, his lips moving insistently against hers, a familiar pattern of movement, almost muscle memory, though the memory fades, and is replaced with this new one. A better memory, perhaps, fresher at the very least. His hands go to her arms, holding her biceps, trying to steady both of them, keep them grounded to the pavement.</p><p>Ingrid breaks away suddenly, removes her hands from his cheeks, wipes the saliva from her mouth. They stare, brown eyes into green, Sylvain still holding onto Ingrid as if she’s all that is anchoring him to their reality. She shakes him free, holds her hand against her mouth, clamping it shut, lest she say anything, lest she incriminate herself any further. <br/><br/>She backs away. One step, then another. Sylvain continues to stare, his face morphing from confusion to disbelief to something that Ingrid can only describe as genuine sadness. She can feel her own eyes watering, and blinks fast to remove those traitorous tears. She takes another step.</p><p>“Ingrid-“<br/><br/>“I’m sorry.”<br/><br/>“No, I-“<br/><br/>“I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry Sylvain.”<br/><br/>Ingrid takes another step, sideways, then pivots and begins to run. They’ve walked in familiar route from Felix’s house. It’s not hard to find her car. Behind her, she can hear another set of footsteps, one that can only belong to Sylvain. But while he was painting, and going to choir, and doing drama club, Ingrid played sports, and did athletics, and she’s absolutely certain that she can outrun him.</p><p>She can see her car as she rounds the corner, parked a little further up the street. If she squints, she can make out Rodrigue’s car pulling into the driveway – Felix is going to ask questions, questions that she doesn’t want Sylvain to answer. She turns her head, looks back. He’s nowhere in sight. Maybe he’s continuing his walk around the block. Maybe he’s following her at a slower pace. But it doesn’t matter – all that Ingrid needs to do now is get into her car.</p><p>As she does, a light flicks on inside Felix’s house. Logically, she knows she’s too full of adrenaline to drive. Emotionally, she knows she can’t sit outside here. One of the Fraldarius’ will see her, or worse, Sylvain will come back and wonder why she’s still sitting here. Instead, she carefully drives, very slowly, up the street, and into a side street in the opposite direction from where Sylvain would be walking.</p><p>She parks there, pulling into a space behind two vans. At least her car is inconspicuous, a common car that Sylvain could easily walk past if he were to come over this way for some reason. Ingrid leans her head on the steering wheel after turning off the engine, and lets her tears fall, making dark spots on her jeans.</p><p>She’s shaking, she notices, and she’s not sure why. She feels terrible, she can tell that much for certain. This isn’t a feeling that she’s used to. She kissed Sylvain. She <em>kissed Sylvain.</em> Right in the middle of the street, she had pulled him down and kissed him. God, she was an idiot. She was the stupidest person in Fhirdiad. She used to think that title belonged to Sylvain himself, but she’s worse – she’s in love with him, and that makes her the stupidest person in all of Fódlan.</p><hr/><p>Ingrid doesn’t contact him for a week. She ignores texts from Dimitri and Felix, asking if she wants to go out. The answer to that question is most definitely no. She pretends not to see a call from Felix, and when she listens to his voicemail she just feels even worse about the whole thing, because it sounds like he’s gloating about the whole event. He was right, he tells her, as if she doesn’t already know. She likes Sylvain.</p><p>Work keeps her busy. The head of the practice takes her out to the country to a farm to get some more practice out there. There’s no reception, a good excuse to ignore her friends. When she returns to her apartment, there’s multiple texts, this time, including from Sylvain.</p><p>She wants a bath. Desperately. It’s the main concern in her mind. She needs to lie down, in hot water, and pretend that nothing happened. But she doesn’t have a bath, so she sits at the bottom of the shower until she realises that the water gets colder the further down it gets and all she’s really achieved is turning her bathroom into a sauna.</p><p>Friday night means comfort TV. She’s never been one for it, but with a tub of ice cream, it manages to cheer her up a little. Ingrid isn’t even sad – she’s angry. And what’s worse, she can’t even take it out on anyone, because the person she’s angry with is herself. (And Sylvain, a little bit, but mostly herself).</p><p>She let herself get carried away. A week later, she can admit that. She listened to Sylvain’s “funny how things are always just stuff”, and laughed, and got lost in that twinkly look in his dark eyes. She got lost in his <em>smile</em>. God, and now she’s thinking about him again, and how he’ll probably never speak to her again. And she deserves it too, for being so stupid.</p><p>Felix texts again. She ignores it. Felix texts again. She ignores it. Felix texts again. She ignores it. Dimitri texts. She ignores it. She puts the ice cream back in the freezer. She gets a blanket from her bedroom, one she told Sylvain she didn’t have. She wraps herself in it, even though it’s not that cold, because she needs the comfort of something soft around her right now.</p><p>There’s a knock at the door. Who keeps letting people into the building for her? She ignores the knock – it’s not going to be someone she wants to speak to. She buries her head in the blanket. The knock comes again. Ingrid glances at her phone – twenty to ten. Who comes over this late? The person knocks again.</p><p>Frustrated, Ingrid yells as she gets up, tossing her blanket to one side, gritting her teeth as she makes her way to the door. Logically, she knows who’s going to be there, and yet somehow, she’s still surprised. Unlike last time, Sylvain doesn’t bother with greetings, with explaining how he got there. He marches past her, into her apartment, and sits down on her sofa like he belongs there, some piece of furniture that she’s been missing.</p><p>“We need to talk,” he says as she nervously re-enters the room. It’s a sentence she hates, it’s a sentence she’s been dreading.</p><p>“Okay,” Ingrid says quietly, sitting down at the opposite end of the sofa.</p><p>“You’ve been ignoring all our messages. I was worried,” he says. He’s not angry, that’s the first thing Ingrid notices. His voice is calm, calmer than she’s ever heard him speak. “I… it’s unlike you to do something like this.”<br/><br/>“I was busy,” she excuses. She’s always been a terrible liar, and he knows this. He breathes out a laugh.</p><p>“You’re always busy, Ingrid. And yet you always respond to texts.”<br/><br/>“Sorry. I know I said that before, but I mean it. For everything. I am sorry.”</p><p>“You have nothing apologise for. Apart from ghosting me, maybe.”<br/><br/>Her mouth falls open at that. He’s right – he’s always right. She’s done to him what she hated him doing to her, albeit on a smaller scale. She stares at her knees, unable to look him in the eye. Sylvain moves towards her, their legs bumping into each other. He’s practically pressed against her as he gently takes her chin, and turns her head to face him. He looks at her, properly, and Ingrid can feel herself tearing up.</p><p>“I’m so sorry,” she manages to get out.</p><p>“What are you apologising for?” He says slowly.</p><p>“For ghosting you. For kissing you, and for running off after when I should’ve just… said sorry and laughed it off and we could’ve finished the walk.”<br/><br/>“I accept your apology for the first one. That was a dick move, and I should know. I think I hold the world record for ghosting.”</p><p>She manages to laugh at that. Sylvain drops his hand to his knee, leans back slightly, out of her space. He takes her hand, just like he did that time in his room. It happens so slowly, so painfully, but Ingrid knows that it’s because he’s giving her time to pull away. She contemplates it, but lets him hold her hand, because it feels like the only contact she’s going to get from him.</p><p>“Think back to last week. You stopped in the middle of the street and pulled me down and kissed me. You stopped and ran off. But… what did I do?”<br/><br/>“I… what did you do? Sylvain, I… I don’t know.”<br/><br/>“I kissed you back.”<br/><br/>“You what?” Ingrid breathes. <br/><br/>“I kissed you back,” he repeats. “You were so caught up in the fact that you felt bad for whatever reason that you didn’t even realise that I was holding onto you for dear life, because I have been waiting so many years for that, Ingrid. You don’t understand how many times I’ve thought about kissing you, especially over the last few months.”<br/><br/>“What are you talking about, Sylvain?” Ingrid sighs. This all sounds so familiar – a rehashed speech that he’s given to countless other girls.</p><p>“What I’m saying, Ingrid Brandl Galatea, is that I am in love with you. And I quite enjoyed the fact that you kissed me last week, and I would like to kiss you again, if you’re ameanable to the idea.”<br/><br/>“I am,” she says, though she’s not really sure what she’s saying or why she’s agreeing to this, and really she’s just a little confused about what’s happening because Sylvain is in her apartment and Sylvain is on her sofa and Sylvain smells really nice, like new soap and weird aftershave and coffee, like he’s always smelled, and Sylvain’s hand is cupping her jaw and Sylvain is leaning in and Ingrid is closing her eyes.</p><p>He kisses her. His mouth finds hers with no issue, lips gentle against her own. He doesn’t bother to use his tongue, just tilting his head, moving his mouth as he finds the perfect angle to kiss her, and kiss her, and kiss her. She moves closer, wrapping her arms around his neck, pulling him in as close as she can, ignoring the fact that she’s crying for some reason now and he might be too – it’s really hard to tell when they’re joined so closely together.</p><p>As the taste of salt breaches her lips, Ingrid ends the kiss abruptly. She doesn’t move her arms away, keeping them locked behind his head. His hand falls to her shoulder, the other settling on her waist. Both of them sit still for a moment, unsure how to proceed. Ingrid rests her forehead against Sylvain’s, and smiles when he breathes out a laugh.</p><p>“I love you,” he repeats, quietly, for her ears only despite there being no one else around.</p><p>“I love you too,” she tells him, and relishes in how his face splits into a massive grin, the first one that Ingrid has seen from him in a long time.</p><p>“And I’m sorry for… putting you through hell before. We missed out on a lot, all those years that I was away.”<br/><br/>“It’s not your fault,” Ingrid says. She pauses for a second, watches as he raises an eyebrow, and then laughs. “Well okay, maybe it is.”</p><p>“I’d like to take you out sometime. On a proper date. I know we’ve had breakfast, and hung out a lot, but I’d like to take you to dinner. Wherever you want to go.” Ingrid smiles as she thinks about this, and her mind only comes up with one option.</p><p>“McDonalds,” she says honestly. “We need to go to McDonalds at some stupid hour of the morning like we used to.”<br/><br/>“I am up for that,” Sylvain agrees. “I’ll be fun. And I know you’d enjoy that more than getting dressed up to go to some fancy restaurant.”<br/><br/>He sighs, and lets go of her slowly, lifting his forehead from hers, taking his hands away. Though it isn’t cold, Ingrid laments the sudden loss of his heat. She chases that warmth, settling into his side, revelling in how well they fit together. It’s like the old metaphor of finding your other half, but he’s been here all the time, and it’s just been a case of slotting the two pieces together.</p><p>“Hey,” Sylvain mumbles, his voice muffled by the fact that he’s kissing the top of her head. “Is Brandl a German name?”</p><p>“I think so, why?”<br/><br/>“Because I want to be ger-man.” He stifles a giggle, and Ingrid pulls out of his embrace to fix him with a stare. Her façade doesn’t last very long – her mouth breaks into a smile and she rolls her eyes as she leans her head on his chest once again.</p><p>“You are the absolute worst.”<br/><br/>“But can I be your man?”<br/><br/>“No bad pickup lines, and maybe I’ll consider it,” she jokes, leaning upwards to kiss him. He chases her as she sits back down again, and she jokingly pushes his face away.</p><p>“I take it back, and accept your terms.”<br/><br/>“Sylvain, I was joking.”</p><p>“Make that more clear next time!”<br/><br/>“How long have you known me? You should know how I joke by now.”<br/><br/>“I know that you don’t joke!”</p><p>“Come here.”</p><p>She twists her body so that she’s kneeling on the sofa beside him, their faces more or less level. Ingrid leans in, kisses him, and for the first time in a long time, allows herself to think of Sylvain and nothing else. She tilts her head, and opens her mouth, allowing his tongue that’s been gently tracing the line of her lips to enter her mouth.</p><p>This is what she wants, she realises, a sudden realisation that comes as quite a shock. But there’s an easy way to tell this to Sylvain. She leans back, pulling away from the kiss, his hands leaving her face to balance himself on the arm of the sofa. His legs cage her in, and he looks surprised at her actions. This only fuels her more, and with a grin to rival his usual charming smile, Ingrid pulls Sylvain down with her.</p><hr/><p>
  <em>{Felix} 11:32pm: Hey, have you heard from Sylvain? He’s not here and we’re worried.</em>
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  <em>{Ingrid} 12:01am: He’s with me, don’t worry.</em>
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  <em>{Felix} 12:02am: I don’t like how long that took you to respond.</em>
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  <em>{Felix} 12:03am: Oh god gross</em>
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  <em>{Ingrid} 12:03am: FELIX!!!!!!!!</em>
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